


The Sun Blazed All Around

by ThisDominionIsMine



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Animal Death, Cunnilingus, Dog training, F/M, Found Family, Horses, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, diner au, dog rescue, eventing, horse rescue, modern day AU, squadron of deadly disabled women, trans!Dag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-04-17 09:44:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 75,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4662012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisDominionIsMine/pseuds/ThisDominionIsMine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Furiosa has an eventing barn; Angharad has a diner; Dag's just acquired a veterinary practice; Max has a hurt pitbull puppy; Capable has a caffeine addiction; Cheedo has some questionable parents; Toast keeps finding illegal guns on top of important papers; Valkyrie has a plan, and there are a lot of big dogs underfoot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Long, Low Thunder

**Author's Note:**

> I know quite a lot about horses, but I have spent my entire life living in New York and Seattle, so my entire knowledge of Australia, how it does horses, and how the local slang works comes from the internet. If something grossly incorrect or racist/sexist/transphobic/etc. appears, don't be afraid to call me out on it - I'll double-check anything that seems iffy, but it's inevitable that something will slip through the cracks. Happy reading!

The first time Max meets Furiosa JoBassa, she’s carrying a shotgun. In that precise moment, he does not know her name or where she’s from or why she has it; she’s just the woman who has horses and dogs and a shotgun that lives down his road. The double-barrels aren’t pointed at him – professional – but she’s still standing under a floodlight that throws back the corners of the darkness with a shotgun in her hands and a very large dog barking from her heel, and Max is absolutely trespassing on her property in the middle of the night. At least two other dogs are also barking from somewhere he can’t see behind her.

“What do you want?”

Max plants his feet and stops moving when the shotgun twitches towards him. “I found a dog. Pup. It’s hurt.”

The shotgun thinks about lowering. “Let me see.” She snaps her fingers at her dog. “Rei. Down.”

The dog makes a warbling, discontented noise, then slumps to the ground and plants its black-masked face between two enormous yellow paws. After a moment, the others quiet down too.

The pup is curled against Max’s jacket, chewing nervously at the collar. It’s a pitbull, mostly gray, but it’s got a white belly and face except for a splotch around one eye. Some of the white on its head isn’t so white right now, because it’s been hit with something and is bleeding from the side of its skull. Max steps further into the light so she can hear it whimpering.

The shotgun is now pointed straight down. “You’re lucky,” she says. “Our vet’s here right now. Come on.” She points him up a gravel driveway and walks behind him. There’s a house tucked off to the left, and a barn with a floodlight mounted over the entrance on the right. She steps ahead of him at the intersection, walks into the barn, turns right immediately into a doorway, and flicks on a light.

The room is part-office, part-kitchen. There’s a desk and a couch, plus a nook in one corner with a sink, cabinets, a coffeepot, and a mini-fridge.

The shotgun gets stashed under the desk, and then the woman holds out her hands for the pup. Max blinks. One of them isn’t a hand – it’s steel wires and poles and bungee cords and a lot of unidentifiable metal pieces. The three fingers and thumb have rubber grips on the undersides. She sees him staring and raises her eyebrows expectantly.

Max hands her the dog.

The big yellow one has followed them inside; it circles Max, sniffing him endlessly. He probably smells like the diner.

The pup whines a little, cupped in Shotgun Woman’s metal hand while she uses her flesh one to prod at the cut on its head. Its fur is caked with grit. She sets it down on her desk and unlocks an old, beat-to-shit wardrobe that stands behind it. Inside are shelves packed with bottles and boxes; she pulls out one of each: saline and gauze. “Where did you find her?”

Max looks at the floor. “Dumpster.”

Shotgun Woman stares at him.

Max shifts his weight between his feet. “I work at the diner. End of shift, take out the trash. Heard crying. Look inside, there’s a pup. It’s hurt. Everything’s closed. So…” He shrugs.

A teenager with long black hair tied up in a bun pokes her head through the door. “Furiosa? Lily just pooped.” She spies the puppy on the desk. “Oh, who’s this?”

“Hurt pup,” Shotgun Woman – Furiosa – says unnecessarily. “Keep her walking, but have Dag stop in here, will you?”

“Sure thing.” The teenager disappears.

Furiosa digs into a drawer in her desk and comes up with a plastic bag, them scoops the puppy up with her non-metal hand and carries her to the sink. There’s a scale on the counter next to it that she hits a button on before she sets the pup on it. She pulls a treat from the bag and offers it on her fingertips.

The puppy wiggles and snatches the treat.

“What’s your name?”

“Does it matter?”

Furiosa rolls her eyes. “Fine. Are you keeping this dog?”

Max leans against the couch. “Might as well.”

“Then help me with this.” She moves the pup to the sink and gestures at the space next to her with her metal hand. “Grab what’s on my desk.”

He collects the bottle and gauze pads and moves into the indicated spot.

Furiosa flicks her gaze at him, then at the puppy. “She’s about eight weeks. Could have some basic training.” She lifts one hand. “Sit.”

The puppy plants her rear end in the sink. The whip of her tail zips back and forth.

“Good girl,” Furiosa murmurs. She turns on the tap, running a trickle into the sink. The puppy looks at it and licks her snout, then tries to bite at the water. Furiosa lets her play with it for a minute, then turns up the stream and pulls the faucet nozzle out of its holder so she can wash the worst of the dirt from the puppy’s back and legs. “Hold her head.”

Max grabs another treat from the bag and holds it so that the puppy turns towards him. He lets her snap it up, then curls his fingers around the side of her snout so that she stays looking at him while the water rinses out her cut. She licks his palm.

A voice floats through the open door: “Cheedo said something about a new dog?”

“Over here.”

A gaunt woman with white-blonde hair appears at Furiosa’s hip. She’s got a tangle of mismatched braids and loose hair meshed into one larger braid that hangs to the middle of her back. “Oh, a puppy,” she croons. “What happened to you?”

“Found in the trash with a bashed head,” Furiosa says. “Not bleeding too bad anymore.”

Dag nods and nudges Max out of her way with a cheerful elbow. “Let’s have a Captain Cook at the little one, then.” She bends over the sink.

Furiosa meets Max’s eyes over Dag’s hunched shoulders. “You ever had a dog before?”

“A long time ago.”

Her mouth twitches. She yanks open a cabinet and pulls out a bag of puppy chow the size of Max’s torso. “She’s about five kilos right now, so give her two scoops three times a day. There’s a cup in there. Follow the chart on the back – she’s about three months old right now.” She thrusts the bag at him as she rolls past. “You got a pair of flat-bottomed bowls? Small ones? That she can drink from?” When Max shakes his head, the bottom of the wardrobe gets pulled open. She throws a leash at him that folds over his shoulder before he can grab it, and comes up with two doggie bowls, one yellow, one green. “Always make sure she has water. If you’ve got cardboard boxes you aren’t using, you can make her a nest in one. She can’t walk far on her own. Don’t make her. She might be housetrained, but don’t be surprised if she isn’t. There are books and the internet to help you.” She stops and looks past him. “How’s Lily?”

The Dag is cupping the puppy’s chin and drizzling iodine onto her cut, occasionally pacifying her with another treat. “Fair dinkum gas colic. She can have a handful of soaked hay once an hour or so tomorrow, but don’t turn her out on grass or give her grain for another day or two.” She glances at Max. “Where you live, stranger?”

Max jerks his head in the general direction. “Up the road a ways.”

She squints at him. “Yellow house? Big garden out back?”

He nods.

“So _you’re_ the tenant. Been wondering who she was leasing to.”

Max looks over his shoulder, but Furiosa has vanished. “She?”

Dag sweeps a towel from another cabinet and gathers the pup onto the countertop to dry her. “I took over my old boss’ practice when she passed a few months ago. She lived there for… fifty years? Forever. Took care of all this lot for as long as Furiosa’s been here.” She waves at the barn around them. “Hadn’t talked to her daughter in ages, and she… she died suddenly. Daughter had no luck selling the place, but _apparently_ she found a tenant.” She feeds the puppy another treat as she smooths a gauze bandage over the cut. “Anything left alive in that garden?”

Max shakes his head. “Dead before I moved in.”

Dag frowns. “Crying shame.” She looks at the pup. “You don’t have a collar. We best find you one.” She sweeps over to Furiosa’s desk and rifles through drawers without any apparent expectation of being murdered for her snooping, and produces a tiny pink thing that she slips around the pup’s neck. Then there’s a temporary tag with a white slip of paper that can fit under a plastic cover. Dag scratches off the address before Max can say anything, then nails him with an expectant eye. “What’ll you name her?”

He shrugs helplessly. The puppy prances across the desk to him and wags her tail so hard her whole body shakes. “She looks like she has an eyepatch,” he mutters as a concession.

“Pirate!” Dag chirps. “Excellent.” She scribbles it down, then clips the tag onto the front of the collar. “Pi works, too, if you like math or good stories.” She winks. “I’ll send you with a few bandages. Keep the spot clean for a few days and she’ll be fine. The puppy wags at both of them.

She doesn’t completely understand the concept of the leash, or the harness that Dag procures, but Max has dog food and bowls to carry, so there’s nothing to be done until they get to his car. She zig-zags around him as he steps into the aisle.

There’s a clip-clopping of hooves, and Furiosa walks out of a giant dirt arena that takes up half the space under the barn’s roof. She’s leading a tubby white-and-gray pony whose shoulders barely reach her waist.

Pi whines and scoots behind Max.

“She won’t hurt you, pup. She’s just a sick little mare.” Dag kneels to stroke Pi’s head, then walks over to the pony and scratches her rump. “Right Lily-billy? You’d never hurt a baby.” She smiles at Max. “You take care of her now.”

He nods and tugs Pi towards the door.

Furiosa clears her throat. “Hey.”

He stops.

“There’s a law about pitbulls. When she’s over a year or so, you take her anywhere, you have to put a muzzle on her. So. If you decide you don’t want her, bring her back here. Not a dumpster.”

Max looks down at Pi. The big yellow dog, Rei, is lying just inside the door, watching them with one eye open. “Got it.”

The other dogs from before start barking again when they walk outside; he looks over his shoulder and sees their silhouettes in the windows of the house: an Aussie Shepard gone grey with age and a Rottweiler, yammering to each other. They keep at it until Max reaches the gate at the end of the driveway and maneuvers through it with one hand full of food and gear and the other full of leash. Then they’re at his car, parked at the side of the empty desert road. Pi squats and piddles at the edge of the property line.

“Good dog.” Max pulls the door open with two fingers. “You get shotgun,” he tells the pup, and sets down the food so he can lift her inside.

***

It’s rare to find plants that grow above knee-height without serious human intervention anywhere near Citadel, which means that Furiosa can walk out onto the hill in the center of the back pasture any time after sunset and tell you how many people are awake in a two- or three-kilometer radius. The girls call it the Outback paddock. Citadel was built on top of an aquifer, so she can afford to buy enough water to keep a few acres of grass alive and edible, but that’s the last green in any direction until you hit the horizon.

Melissa’s house used to be the exception – the Keeper, the girls called her; Keeper of the Seeds – but her garden has been dead and yellow for half a year now.

Once Dag’s truck rolls past the gate with Cheedo in the passenger seat, Furiosa turns Lily out in a mud pen with a run-in shelter next to Tripp and Bones’ pasture so she has some company. The Welsh pony ambles into the run-in and sniffs at the water bucket, then begins nosing around on the ground in search of hay. Furiosa stoops next to her and lays her ear against her barrel.

It’s quiet for a long moment, and then there’s a reassuring gurgle.

“You’re okay, girl,” Furiosa tells the pony. “Get some rest and feel better.”

Rei trots up as she’s chaining the paddock gate behind her. He yips. A black shape separates out from the dark next to him, blinking at her with yellow eyes.

“You followed them home, didn’t you?”

Nahi’s tongue lolls out of his mouth. He’s mostly wolf, crossed with one or two unknown dog breeds, and she hasn’t found a fence that can hold him. Rei’s a Kurdish Kangal. They’re a hell of a pair for scaring people away.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go home.”

They lope ahead of her to the house, where Jackson and Paddy are pouting about the excitement they missed out on. The four dogs scuffle around each other as Furiosa strips off her barn boots and begins unbuckling her arm. She drops it on Valkyrie’s stomach where she’s asleep on the couch. Netflix is frozen on the TV screen.

Valkyrie throws a hand up and whacks Furiosa in the ribs. “Dipstick.”

“Crow eater.”

“Damn right.” She grins at Furiosa. “How’s the pony?”

“It was gas colic. Turned out fine.”

“Good.” Valkyrie drags a blanket off the back of the couch and nestles under it. “Time?”

“Almost one.”

“Ah, shit.” Valkyrie wrinkles her nose, then kicks the blanket off. “To bed it is. You doing morning feeds?”

“Capable offered to take them, but I need to make sure she doesn’t give Lily grain or hay.”

“What you need is to sleep,” Valkyrie says. “What can she have?”

“Soaked hay. A handful every hour.”

“Great. I’ll tell her. Get the hell out of here.” She throws Furiosa’s arm at her and heads for her bedroom with Jackson and Paddy following at her heels.

Furiosa climbs the stairs to her room in the dark, counting steps. Her eyes are scratchy with exhaustion, and her feet hurt from three hours of laps in the arena with Lily. Rei tries to claim a spot on her pillow until she snaps her fingers and sends him to the floor. She strips out of her clothes, drags on basketball shorts and a clean-ish tank top, splashes water on her face, and crawls into bed.

Rei thunders up next to her, and Nahi follows him. They settle together with their heads on each other’s haunches, tucked against the back of her knees.

***

Max doesn’t work on Sundays. He wakes up to Pi yipping and scuffing at the sides of the box that he put her in at the end of his bed. He tosses aside the blankets. “What’s up, dog? You hungry?”

Pi yips louder when she sees him stand up.

“Okay, okay.” He lifts her out of the box. Her water bowl is half empty, so he carries it to the kitchen sink while she trundles along behind. He refills the bowl, sets it down, puts two scoops of food in the yellow bowl, sets that down, then wanders away to piss.

She’s busy with the food long enough for him to start a pot of coffee, but then she starts pacing in front of the back door.

“One minute, pup. Pi. One minute.” He pours a bowl of cereal, pieces together a cup of coffee, then opens the door.

The house faces south, so the porch on the rear opens onto the Outback. The roof extends to cover it so it’s bearable to be out there during the day. Max sits on the steps with his breakfast and watches Pi sniff at the remnants of the garden. She poops between a pair of sticks that look like they used to support tomatoes, then piddles at the edge of that box and hops over to the next one to investigate.

“Pi.”

She ignores him.

He whistles.

She looks up, and when Max whistles a second time she trots back to him with her tail wagging.

He plucks a flake of sugar-coated wheat-bran from the bowl. “Sit, Pi.”

Pi snaps at the air.

“Sit.”

She sneezes, then sits.

He flips the flake into the air. She leaps to catch it, misses, and crunches it up off the ground. “Good dog.”

***

Max can’t tell if Pi likes the box, and he doesn’t want his jacket to be her only toy, so he puts her in his car again after rinsing garden-dirt out of her cut and replacing the gauze. There’s nothing but desert and scrub-grass to the horizon, so he has a clear view of the barn as they roll down the dirt road. There’s an area out front as well, bigger than the one inside, full of yellow sand. He’s seen people ride in there before.

A green plastic bush that comes up to the middle of Max’s chest has been placed in the swath of hard-packed dirt between the arena and the road. Furiosa is in the in-between space on a horse – a big horse. Tall and brown with long legs. Furiosa’s got her arm on, but he can’t see what she’s using it to hold.

 Furiosa and the horse round a corner until they’re running parallel with the car. Then the horse rocks back onto its hind end, takes three massive, lunging strides forward, and leaps into the air, clearing the bush with room to spare. Furiosa moves forwards with it, then sits back once all four feet have touched the ground, gets it balanced and swinging through a turn. There’s another fence next to the rail of the arena with something that looks like a kiddie pool at its base. Max watches the horse set up for takeoff again, but then he has to look back at the road.

The nearest pet store is almost an hour away in Port Augusta. The drive puts Pi to sleep, but once they reach the coast, she’s up and sniffing at the salt on the wind.

The store must reek of other animals, because Pi spins circles around him and tries to get his legs tangled in the leash until he admits defeats and picks her up. They walk to the toy aisle, where he pokes through a barrage of colors. Some things squeak, some things rattle, some are tough rubber, some rough plastic. Pi wants all of them. He picks out pairs for her to inspect and gets the one she sniffs at longer. They wind up with a riot of colors in the bottom of the basket.

The beds aren’t any better. He gets one the same color as the gray parts of her fur. He puts it in the basket and her on top of it, and she goes to sleep again while he wanders around looking for a more permanent tag for her collar. The store does engravings on-site, so he drops a plain black rectangle on the counter, gives them his address and the letters P and I.

***

Lily is thoroughly pissed about her forced starvation by the end of the day. She sulks in the corner of the paddock and paws at the ground in exasperation when Furiosa tosses Trip and Bones their dinner. The two Quarter horses stand together, tails swishing, rattling their buckets and occasionally dropping their heads to grab a mouthful of hay. Eventually, Toast begs permission to take her out and graze her for a few minutes while the rest of the horses eat.

The man with the pitbull drives back up the road.

“I still like that car,” Valkyrie says. “We ever find out who owns it?”

Furiosa glances away from the hay in the wheelbarrow. She catches the car’s taillights and the gleam of sunset off the rear window.

“That’s pitbull guy,” Cheedo says. “He rents the Keeper’s house.”

Toast is sitting on the arena fence, Lily’s lead rope in one hand and her phone in the other. She looks up while continuing to tap out an email one-handed. “Nice car, likes dogs… what’s he do?”

“Something at the diner in town.” Furiosa moves to the next paddock: Pearl and her companion miniature pony, Pee-Wee. The six-year-old Thoroughbred prances in place until Furiosa tosses the two their hay.

“How was she today?” Toast asks. “You were trying her over cross-country fences, right?”

 Furiosa reaches over the rail to stroke Pearl’s neck. “She was good. She still wastes too much energy trying to clear the brush fences. It’s a work in progress.”

Pee-Wee jams his little palomino head through the slats of the fence to snag a mouthful of hay. Furiosa shoes him away and opens the gate to the back paddock, where four geldings have been staring at her longingly. Valkyrie hops over the fence with a brace of grain buckets hooked on her arms. She hangs them in the stalls of the run-in shelter near the front of the pasture while Furiosa pitches hay in, and then they close the geldings into their stalls for the night. Furiosa has pulled off her heavy steel arm for the night and thrown on a much lighter, simpler device: an adjustable clamp that is currently fitted for a pitchfork or the handle of a wheelbarrow, so she can balance the weight of muck and hay with two arms instead of one.

“If he’s at the diner, does that mean Angharad hired him?” Valkyrie asks.

“She probably needed the extra help. She looks like she’s going to pop any day now, and Capable’s… well, capable, but she can’t run the diner _and_ cook everything.” Toast procures a toothpick from somewhere and starts chewing on it. “She hasn’t been around in a while.”

The smaller paddock next to the big one in the back normally has three pony mares, but with Lily sick, Sis and Fancy have only each other to bully. They also have to get shut away for the night; the two pastures encompass several acres, and closing them in protects them from themselves and anything that might get through the fence.

Valkyrie hauls Fancy’s door shut. “Doesn’t she have a boyfriend or something? Some socially-inept golden retriever boy?”

Toast rolls her eyes. “They just had their third date. She texted me about it for an hour beforehand, asking for advice.”

“On what, how to do his taxes?” Cheedo is sitting next to the dog kennels, rubbing Jackson’s belly while the big Rottweiler lays on his back with his paws in the air, but she still squeals when Toast picks a splinter off the fence to flick at her.

“There’s more to life than boys,” Valkyrie declares. She shoots a pointed glance at Cheedo. “Don’t you have a curfew?”

“Yeah. Sunset.”

“So… now.”

Cheedo smiles. “Can I get a ride?”

Valkyrie groans as she and Furiosa reach the last paddock. Gen hates other horses, so she lives against the northern wall of the barn, next to the dog kennels. “Your parents already think we’re lesbian witches who are going to bewitch you into doing slave labor for us for the rest of your life-”

“Correction,” Cheedo says. “They think _you’re_ a lesbian witch. They think Furiosa’s a militant separatist cyborg.”

“That’s a lot better than a boring old witch,” Valkyrie complains. She clips Gen’s grain bucket onto the fence post. “Fine, let’s go before they ban you from setting foot on the property. And you’re wearing a helmet.”

The garage that sits between the house and the road has a lot of machinery in it: an ATV, a pair of busted dirt bikes, a farrier’s setup mounted on cinderblocks in the corner, a gator with the spiked chain net for dragging the rings still attached. And then there’s Valkyrie’s bike, resplendent with crow feathers that she’s been gathering for twenty years.

The engine spits, then roars as Furiosa drags the wheelbarrow into the barn and drops it. She walks back outside to see the bike roll past the gate, and Lily and Paddy touching noses. The young gray mare and old gray Aussie – it could be a movie.

Paddy wags her butt, then bounds over to Furiosa to demand attention.

“She’ll come back soon,” Furiosa tells her. She sinks onto the hard-packed dirt. “I’d call that enough grass; she can go back in.”

Toast nods and tugs Lily’s head up from the grass. She has to wrestle her for every step across the five meters to the pen, and Lily pouts when the gate closes between her and food again.

Toast squints at the western horizon, where the sun has only a single sliver left visible, throwing light. “Bet you a round of mucking the Outback paddock that Cheedo gets grounded again.”

“Sure,” Furiosa says. “She’ll get grounded, she just won’t tell us about it and keep sneaking over here, or cook up an excuse for why she doesn’t show up for a week.” She watches Nahi and Rei trot around the side of the barn. “It was your turn anyway.”

*******

When Angharad hired Max she was already visibly pregnant and had already been ignoring doctors’ orders against staying on her feet all day for a solid six weeks. That was two months ago. What she was really concerned about, she told him, was keeping the diner together _after_ the birth. Citadel is one of those three-hundred-person towns that has one diner, one tourist-trap inn/Outback tours place, one bar, one grocery store, three churches, one bed-and-brekkie, and one part-time mechanic who owns one of the two competing gas stations on opposite sides of the two-lane highway that is the only well-paved road in town. If the diner goes under, half of Citadel will have to find somewhere else to eat breakfast five, six, or seven days a week before they go tend to their parched-dry cattle.

Breakfast is Angharad’s domain. She opens her doors at five and will stick out all seven hours until noon, serving coffee and whipping out of the kitchen with three plates balanced on one arm every ninety seconds. But after that – that’s where Max comes in, when all anyone wants is a sandwich and maybe a mug of tea, and the person who tries hardest to have a conversation with him is Capable the cook, who spends the spaces between customers sitting on a stool at the counter and drinking coffee like the world is about to run out. Angharad generally remains on the property – she only goes home if she sees vomiting in her near future – but naps and does paperwork in her office for the afternoon and evening, out of the light and heat and noise.

Sundays are easier because so many people go to church, so Angharad prefers to stick out the whole day with help from Capable and Nux the busboy. The other six days of the week, for the ten hours from noon to close, Max runs the front of the diner.

There’s a tall woman wrapped in leather lounging on a bike decorated with crow feathers when he walks across the parking lot just before noon on Monday, Pi straining at her harness as she tries to identify every new smell. Max takes her in the rear entrance.

Angharad’s still up front, but she turns to greet Max, and then registers the puppy frantically trying to lick her ankles. “Max?” she says expectantly.

“I can’t leave her alone for ten hours.”

Angharad looks over her shoulder at the empty diner, then at Max, then at Pi. “Oh, fine. Put her in my office. You bring her chewies or something?”

Max pats the knapsack slung over his shoulder and nods, then ducks into her office. He traps Pi’s leash under the foot of a chair so she can’t get into too much trouble before he ventures into the diner once more.

Capable has taken advantage of the lull in customers to brew herself a fresh pot of coffee. She’s dumping sugar into a cup when the bell over the door tinkles. “Oh, hey Valkyrie.”

The woman from the motorcycle smiles. “Capable, could I bother you for a grilled chicken sandwich to go? Extra bacon.”

“Sure. Be right out.” Capable slides off her stool and takes her coffee with her into the kitchen.

Valkyrie doesn’t sit; she stalks up to the counter and leans against it, watching Max check that they have enough clean silverware. “Where’s the dog?”

Max deadpans: “What dog?”

Valkyrie stares hard at him. “The one you walked in here with, dingbat. The one you brought to the barn Saturday night.” She straightens up when his shoulders stiffen. “Half our animals are rescues, and we have more horses than anywhere within an hour’s drive. We’ve got a few cameras. Where is she?”

Max keeps fussing with the silverware. “Office.”

“So you got no one to take care of her at home?”

Max doesn’t answer.

Valkyrie gives him another thirty seconds of staring, then gets to her point: “You met a teenager at the barn; her name is Cheedo. She’s almost sixteen. You can hire her for dog-sitting. She’d do it cheap. Maybe for free.”

“Why?”

“Because she likes dogs,” Valkyrie says. “And because child protection is going to want testimony that doesn’t come from me or Furiosa.”

Max blinks.

Valkyrie glances over her shoulder at the door. “Looks better legally if I let you draw your own conclusions, but the last time that kid’s father set foot on our property, Furiosa chased him off with a rifle that… may have been of questionable legality. So. Bring the pup by the barn sometime. See if Cheedo’s up for it. Better than letting it harass Angharad into early labor.” She steps away as Capable reappears with her sandwich. “You’re a dear, you know that?”

“Why me?” Max asks.

Valkyrie glances at Capable, then back at him. “Because it matters.” She slaps a set of bills on the counter that are half again what she owes and takes long, easy strides out the door to her bike.


	2. All Futures Are Bulletproof

Prosthetic arms are not conducive to a lot of activities, and riding five-hundred-kilogram animals that can run more than fifty kilometers an hour and jump while doing so is not an exception. This does not mean that Furiosa does not make it work.

It took the combined efforts of Valkyrie, Furiosa, and both their mothers almost a year to produce a set of reins that weren’t outright dangerous for her to use, and once every two years or so an idea bubbles up that they test out. Some are improvements. Some are not.

Her current reins have a section of circular metal loops that fit around hooks at the base of her fingers, and she can lock the joints at a ninety-degree angle so her fingers don’t shift back and forth. Lengthening or shortening the reins takes more effort and concentration that it does someone with two good hands – enough that she had to stop riding competitively. With these reins, if she has to quickly give the horse their head, she can pull the rings off of the hooks, effectively dropping the rein, but if she doesn’t do that there is no leeway short of the rein breaking. Harley once tripped at the canter, went to his knees, and outright dragged her over his head because she didn’t have enough warning to unhook the rein. They don’t let you run cross-country courses with that kind of setup.

Riding dressage is easier for her than jumping, but it’s a _lot_ easier for an adult horse that’s been rescued from neglect and abuse to learn how to hop a fence than perform a piaffe, and trying to counter-canter a horse that has been beaten for making mistakes is a special kind of hell that she can’t stand. Teaching them so that they’ll tolerate ten-year-olds asking is even more difficult, so she keeps the dressage kids to Sis, Harley, and gentle-giant Pearl. Sometimes the more sensitive ones get to hop on Gen if they’re good enough to get her to pick up the canter instead of the weird, shuffling, half-canter gait that she was trained into and prefers. (Valkyrie bought her and tried to pass off the idea to Furiosa as a project horse instead of a gift, because Gen is _wonderful_ and would have been far beyond their budget range if she’d known what cantering _was_ when Valkyrie bought her, but it’s been six years and they’ve never talked about selling her.)

Bones’ old owner used to tie him up with several other horses so they couldn’t move, get drunk with his friends, and use them for paintball practice. He’s a full-blooded Quarter Horse, but he’s only fourteen hands. He can jump, but he’s been known to decide that Furiosa or Valkyrie are going to kill him in the middle of a lesson and make the person riding him pay the price. Buster came from the same nasty owner, but responded to abuse by getting nasty than fearful. They’ve had the pair of them for six years and Buster still bites if the kids aren’t paying attention, but at least he was intended to be pony-sized from the start.

Tripp’s story involves less abuse and more overuse coupled with minor neglect, so he has recurring lameness issues in his hind legs. He’ll ignore riders who can’t make him pay attention in the first ten minutes of the ride, and he was trained for Western long before anything else, so Valkyrie likes to drag her Western saddle off the rack and ramble around the property and beyond, or work him as she’s teaching a lesson.

Pee-Wee came to them with Harley and Fancy as part of a group who had been abandoned near Adelaide when their owner gave up on the property and left a dozen animals behind. Harley’s too crooked and broken for advanced dressage or jumping, but he’s good for the basics. Fancy is barely thirteen hands, so most of the kids that are interested in dressage are too big for her; she and Lily are the jumping schoolmasters. Pee-Wee has a thyroid condition and was massively obese when they picked him up. He only leaves the property are to keep Pearl company at competitions, and once or twice a year he goes to a nearby school with Toast to spend a few hours delighting children.

Pearl was a racehorse who would get so stressed that she wouldn’t eat for a month after every race. Moving to a new barn stressed her out almost as much; they tossed Pee-Wee into her paddock on a whim, and he immediately became her pint-sized guardian.

Minky technically belongs to Furiosa’s mother. He’s thirty-four and she moved to Adelaide five years ago because she developed a lung condition that needed better monitoring than Citadel’s town doctor could provide. The only time he gets ridden is when she comes to visit, whereupon they kill an entire day wandering around the property in silent companionship.

Sis can do dressage fairly well for a shaggy little pony, but cross-country is her true love; she was the only one they actually bought with the lesson program in mind, but Dag lets them use Roman in lessons and competitions in exchange for reduced board. He’s a Trakehner who split his withers as a foal, so he can’t jump higher than a meter, has problems with certain dressage moves, and has the hardest mouth Furiosa has ever encountered, but he’s dappled gray with a flowing tail and looks gorgeous in any arena.

Nahi was a straightforward abuse case; Rei is a retired military dog; Jackson was a fighting pit rescue. Paddy was a gift to Valkyrie from her mother for surviving until thirty and for getting out of the military. She still has a few good years left.

Jackson stands on his hind legs so he can put his front paws against the arena fence and nudge Furiosa’s hip with his nose. She rubs at his ears. Valkyrie won’t let him in the ring when she’s teaching a jumping lesson, and Roman has a habit of moving sideways instead of forward when spooked.

Capable hasn’t ridden in a few weeks, and Roman can tell. He takes a sideways leap as pitbull guy’s car grinds to a halt next to the gate. She pulls him off the rail into a small circle so he has to canter by the car quietly, then points him at the oxer Valkyrie has waiting for them on the quarter-line.

Roman’s in the air when the car door opens. Capable halts him in a straight line after the oxer and looks over her shoulder.

Valkyrie glances at the car, then walks over to her. Furiosa knows what she’ll say: stop holding his face and letting him pull her over the fence; it’s easy and you can get away with it because he has a hard mouth, but a horse like Pearl would get caught behind her leg and jump the fence from a standstill, then pitch her out of the saddle. Work his mouth so he’s softer, don’t completely throw away the reins – this is arena jumping, not cross-country – but give him the ability to use his head and neck in the air. Now turn around and do it again.

Cheedo crouches and opens her arms as the puppy trots up to her, tail whipping back and forth. “Hey, cutie.” She touches the tag hanging from her collar. “Oh, you’re Pi now? Hi there.”

Pitbull guy leans against the fence as Jackson goes to sniff him. “She’ll get shots and wormed this week,” he says to no one in particular. “But she’s not quite passing health code for the diner.” He blinks when Roman thunders past.

“We can watch her,” Cheedo says. She glances at Furiosa. “Or… I can. I’ll ask my parents. I only get extended curfew if Dag – the vet – is paying me, but, uh, you don’t have to-”

“She can stay here if you have to go home,” Furiosa says.

Pitbull guy meets her eyes for all of a second. “My name is Max.” A pause. “Rockatansky.”

Cheedo sticks out her hand and straightens up. “Cheedo Frajil.”

Capable stops Roman next to the fence. “Max? You’re out in public!”

Max turns and squints up at her. “Not working today?”

“I had the morning shift yesterday. Afternoon and evening today. Maddie and I swap.”

Max blinks. “Maddie?”

“God help us: the man’s oblivious,” Valkyrie mutters as she climbs onto the fence and straddles it. “Maddie’s been working at the diner since before Angharad started bussing tables there – she’s watched the place change hands at least twice. Have you even seen her?”

“I’m the only one who actually tries to talk to him,” Capable says. “Nux swears he’s never seen Maddie anywhere in the diner except the kitchen.” She frowns at Max. “Do you think _I’m_ the one who does all the cursing?”

Valkyrie stares at the sky and closes her eyes, mumbling something irritated in Maori.

Capable strokes Roman’s neck as she continues: “It’s good Angharad finally found someone to help her with running the front since she kicked Rictus out.”

Valkyrie opens her eyes and pats Capable’s knee. “Hey, keep him walking. He saved your arse today.” She watches until they’re out of earshot, then looks at Max. He’s already crouched next to Cheedo and Pi, rifling through a canvas bag that he brought with him, pointing out toys and treats.

Furiosa kicks Valkyrie’s ankle and taps her forearm where her stump rounds off. It’s the middle of December and Cheedo is wearing long sleeves.

Valkyrie nods and then twitches her chin towards Max.

Furiosa drops her hand so the fence is between it and the pair on the ground, points at Valkyrie, then Max, then Cheedo and the puppy.

Valkyrie grins sheepishly.

Furiosa frowns at her. _Be careful_ , she mouths.

Valkyrie’s mouth firms up into a thin line. She nods.

***

When Max gets to the diner, he walks into the kitchen for the first time in two months. There’s a woman with canyon-deep wrinkles carved into her skin standing at the stove. She squints at Max over a spitting omelet. “You got a bloody fuckin’ reason to be back here? Take a day off?”

Nux is hunched over a sink scrubbing a pan approximately the same size as his torso. He shoots Max a sympathetic grin.

Max backs out of the kitchen.

Nux always works part of the morning and into the early afternoon, during the busiest part of the day. He’s okay. He leaves Max alone unless he gets stuck on a crossword clue, and today he’s perpetually in the kitchen starting two hours after Max’s shift begins, when Capable shows up.

She grins at him when she comes out to refill her coffee. “Heard you finally met Maddie.”

Max grunts and continues organizing menus.

Most of the town is dark when he closes up. There are no street lamps lighting his drive home, but lights are on in the house next to the barn. The dogs begin howling when he opens his car door.

Furiosa isn’t wearing her prosthetic when she answers the door. The bag of toys is hanging off her left arm; Pi is curled, half-asleep, in the crook of her elbow. There’s a fresh bandage on her head.

“Thanks,” Max mutters. Pi whines when he lifts her, then plops her head on his shoulder and goes back to sleep.

“You’re good with her,” Furiosa says. “Thought you hadn’t had a dog before.”

Max shakes his head. “Said it was a long time ago. Not never.”

She actually smiles. “Yeah, alright.”

They stand there together in the shadows of her front hall, two dogs – one yellow, one black – flanking her like guards, Pi snuffling into his jacket. Furiosa offers the bag, and he slides it off her stump.

“She’s a good pup.”

“Yeah,” he says. He clears his throat. “Thanks. Again.”

The smile becomes a grin for a fraction of a second. “Have a good night.”

Max nods and backs out the door. A horse snorts somewhere nearby. He watches the light behind the front door flick off, then turns and walks down the driveway with Pi asleep against his chest.

***

The horses’ morning feeds are done at seven, so Furiosa normally wakes up around six to shower and guzzle coffee and feed the dogs. Sometimes Capable will do the feeds and muck a couple paddocks in exchange for a free ride, especially if she needs to run errands before her work shift and wants an early lesson. Besides her, the earliest students show up at eight. Toast wanders in around nine and begins her daily campaign to bring order to the mess that Furiosa and Valkyrie leave across the office. Cheedo works with Dag a couple days a week when school is in session, but she prefers to spend her breaks at the barn, helping the smallest kids groom and tack up in exchange for lessons. Angharad used to ride when she was married, but then she wasn’t and there was only her to manage the diner, and now she’s too pregnant for it to be safe. All of the horses liked her.

Valkyrie knocks a boot against Furiosa’s rump. “You counting dust specks on the window there?”

Furiosa looks down at the full cup of coffee in her hands. “Just thinking.”

“Yeah?”

She nods. “Why Max?”

Valkyrie shrugs as she yanks the boot on. “He smells like a cop and rescues puppies from the trash, which makes him better than most.”

“You don’t know that. And I thought you said he was oblivious.”

Valkyrie raises one eyebrow. “I met him once and I smelled an ex-badge... and I’m pretty sure he got the “we need you to testify that this girl is being abused” message. He didn’t panic when you walked out with a shotgun, did he?”

Furiosa sips her coffee. “Not a flinch.”

“Cop,” Valkyrie repeats. “Or a vet. Either looks good in court.”

“You know they might just toss her into foster care, right?”

“Between you, me, Toast, and Dag, that’s not going to happen.” Valkyrie finishes lacing her boot, puts her foot down, and slings her arm around Furiosa’s shoulders. “We protect our own. We’ll get her out.” She kisses her cheek, then sweeps away. “We feeding Lily today?”

***

When Max brings Pi by the barn, Cheedo isn’t there. Valkyrie is in the outdoor ring, riding muscular orange horse with white splattered across its face. She sees them walk up the drive and yells for him to bring her inside.

Furiosa’s on the ground in the indoor arena; there’s a child on a brown pony that has an almost completely white face bouncing in a circle around her, attached to her by a long rope. Max pokes his head into the office. There’s a dark-skinned woman wrapped in white cloth rooting around in the desk, muttering to herself. She sits up with a gun in her hands, examining it. It’s a Glock 19, which is illegal for civilians to own in Australia. Then she sees Max and freezes.

She doesn’t panic or try to hide the gun. She sets it down on the desk carefully, barrel pointed away from both of them. “Can I help you?”

Max scoops up Pi by way of explanation.

“Oh, you’re pitbull guy. Mike? Max?”

“Max.”

“I’m Toast.” She shoves back from the desk. “Sorry, that’s…” she makes shooing motions at the gun as she circles around the desk.

“Furiosa’s?”

“Probably.” Toast scowls. “No, not probably. Definitely. Valkyrie hides weapons on her body; Furiosa stashes them everywhere.” She pauses. “So… the dog.”

“The dog,” Max agrees. He sets her down. “Pi.” Her hindquarters wiggle with delight.

“She’s cute.”

He hums.

Toast reaches out and rubs Pi’s ears. “Cheedo should be here soon. This is late for her.” She takes the bag of toys out of Max’s arms. “She can keep me company for now.”

Max grunts. “No chewing on the Glock.”

Toast rolls her eyes. “Yeah. Okay.”

Max nods at her and ducks out of the office. The child and pony are off the line and walking around the wall of the arena. Furiosa sees him approaching the gate and saunters over. Her arm gleams.

“Nice Glock in the desk,” he says. “You bought the wrong model. Barrel needs to be at least a centimeter longer before it’s legal.”

There’s a clip-clopping sound behind him.

“Val,” Furiosa calls. “Watch Fancy for a minute? Need to explain something.” She pulls the gate open and lets it swing wide for Valkyrie’s horse. “I’ll be right back,” she tells the child. Then she shoulders past Max. He follows her.

Across the aisle from the office is a room with bags of grain and jars of supplements; she walks through it and out the door on the other side, into an area that is walled off from the ring but open to the outside, full of wheelbarrows, painted wooden standards and poles, and other miscellaneous farm equipment.

She’s too fast with that prosthetic; she locks it around Max’s wrist and drags him off-balance, while her back is still facing him, then spins, hauls him around, and pins him against the wall with her right forearm pressed against his throat.

“So you are a cop.”

Max doesn’t move.

“Not retired. Undercover?”

She’s let go of his wrist. He goes to strike under her ribs on her right side but catches metal and bruises his knuckles.

Furiosa leans some weight on his neck and shifts closer, kicks a knee between his thighs so she can incapacitate him fast and hard if she decides to. She’s taller than him, so she can keep her balance while she does it. “Why are you here?”

“I quit,” he hisses.

“Bullshit.”

Footsteps pad through the doorway. “Furiosa?” Cheedo’s voice.

Furiosa’s head turns.

Max grabs her metal hand and yanks hard enough to wrench her shoulder. Twisting her takes pressure off his windpipe, but when he tries to jerk sideways her leg catches him and sends him sprawling. Then she gets her knee on his back and his hands locked down as two dogs barrel in from the outside, barking and snarling.

Toast walks through the door with the shotgun. Cheedo is frozen behind her. She’s wearing a jumper with the sleeves pulled over her hands.

Max spits out a tongue-load of dirt. He speaks quietly so Cheedo can’t hear and Toast has to strain to listen: “If you try to foster her with illegal guns stashed everywhere, you’re asking for a prison sentence.”

Furiosa’s grip tightens bruisingly. The dogs stop barking and settle into quiet, constant growls. “Why are you here?” she repeats.

Max glares at Toast’s boots.

Toast points the shotgun at the ceiling. “Cheedo,” she says. “Let’s leave Mommy and Daddy to talk and go help untack Fancy before she bites that child’s ear off. Come on.” She wraps the hand not holding a shotgun around Cheedo’s shoulders and pulls her out of sight.

“Max Rockatansky,” Furiosa says. “Ex-cop turned diner host.” She spits to one side.

He stays quiet.

“Dirty cop?” A pause. “Kill someone innocent?”

Max wrinkles his nose. “Get off me.”

Surprisingly, she does. He’s covered in dirt and the knee that hasn’t bothered him for months is aching. She points at the dogs, then out the door. “Go home,” she tells them, and they do. “I was SASR,” she says as he stands. “Eight years.”

Max folds his arms over his chest.

Furiosa lifts her prosthetic. “Afghanistan.”

Max blinks.

She drops the arm. “You’re going to keep Angharad waiting.”

***

Valkyrie is lurking outside, still on Tripp. Furiosa stops next to her, and they watch Max walk down the drive together. “He’s not dead,” Valkyrie observes. “And you’re not in cuffs.”

Furiosa shrugs her right shoulder; her left one needs ice. “Four letters.”

Valkyrie’s head snaps down. “You told him about your arm?”

“I said four letters,” Furiosa murmurs. “And the word ‘Afghanistan’.”

“He’s going to go look you up now,” Valkyrie says. “Pull all his little cop strings. He’ll find us in a heartbeat. We were cursed with recognizable names.”

“So?”

“So you’re the one who doesn’t like people up in our business.”

Furiosa looks at her. “Max Rockatansky. Confirmed cop. Quit. Early forties or hard-living thirties. I think we can toss some scraps around and find something.”

A whining noise comes from her feet. Jackson is carrying Pi by the scruff of her neck, drooling cheerfully as the puppy’s feet kick and she whines about the distance to the ground. He trots up to Furiosa and wags the stub of his tail.

“That puppy’s an innocent bystander,” Valkyrie tells him as Furiosa bends so he can drop Pi into her hands. “You be nice to her, big black dog.”

Jackson _ruffs_ at her and prances away.

***

Max makes the call on the drive in to work, still shaking dirt out of his hair. He gets the first few crumb-facts the next morning. Furiosa JoBassa’s adult life is a mess of redacted information and sealed files, and her surname is the only piece he gets that doesn’t come attached to someone complaining about how they’re risking their job for him.

Born 1974 in Adelaide. Mother: Mary JoBassa. No father on the birth certificate. Enlisted with the Australian Army in February of 1994. Nineteen. Then there’s a mountain of _I can’t get you that mate_ s until 2002, when a Victoria Cross and a medical discharge pop up. There’s some shit about trucking and road trains attached to a heavy-combination class license that she got in 2007, but then early in 2009 she dropped off the intelligence community’s map. The barn is her last registered address. And here she is, down the road from Max, dog-sitting and pinning him to walls and trying to rescue a teenage girl from her parents.

Max rubs a hand over his face and takes a deep breath, then closes his laptop. Pi sits at the bottom of the steps and yips. “Sit,” he says, then “Down.”

She plops onto the dead grass, and he tosses her a bite of cereal.

When he picked her up last night, Furiosa met him on the driveway with the leash and bag both gripped in one hand. She was dressed for bed: black basketball shorts and a green tank top, not wearing her prosthetic.

Valkyrie Gale (also born in 1974 in Adelaide to a single mother) is one of the few confirmed female members of the Special Air Service Regiment, but beyond that her file has as many blacked-out lines of text as Furiosa’s. She had an honorable discharge shortly before Furiosa got that HC class license, and then she, too, has been keeping her life quiet for the last six or seven years. They graduated high school together. They enlisted the same day. They landed in the same squadron of the same highly-selective regiment. Valkyrie’s specialization was marked as ‘linguist’; after reading that, Max flicked back to Furiosa’s file and found ‘explosives expert’ in the same spot.

Out there in the driveway, she’d mainly looked tired. Not tired as in broken or dying inside. She looked like a woman who was going to be forty-two in a couple months and was too busy to care about the dirt under her fingernails. She looked like a woman who was awake with less than an hour to go until midnight and knew she had to get up with the sun in the morning, and _wanted_ to get up with the sun. She looked like the kind of person who had been startled to make it to forty at all, and then, once she got there, shrugged and kept right on rolling.

She looked like someone who Max might have done something thrilling and reckless and dangerous with when he was eighteen or twenty or thirty. But he’s forty. He’s got a bad knee. And there isn’t much left for him to do anymore.

Pi squeals and jumps to follow the shadow of a passing bird. Max watches her trot to the edge of the garden, then whistles for her to come back.

He holds out another flake of cereal as she beelines towards him. “Wanna go to the barn?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-Australians: the Special Air Service Regiment is to the Australian Army what SEALs are to the US Navy.  
> Australians/everyone who is going "they don't let women in the SASR, you fuckhead": this will hopefully be the most flagrant suspension of disbelief that this fic requires. Pretend with me, imagine Furiosa and Valkyrie taking down a dozen guys twice their size as hormone-fueled teenagers, and be happy.


	3. A Capable Creature

No Cheedo again.

Capable’s hanging out in the office with Toast, killing time before she has to go to work, and she squeals when Max walks in with the puppy. Toast hasn’t told her that she threatened the man with a shotgun approximately twenty-four hours ago, or that Furiosa is why he’s favoring his left knee, but there are plenty of moments to tell her that are not the present.

Max is remarkably peaceable, given recent events. He says three words and drops the leash so Pi can tangle it around Capable’s ankles, so it’s not like he’s earbashing them, but he doesn’t call the cops on them and Valkyrie doesn’t run him down on horseback, and Toast figures that everyone’s agreed to survive each other. She waits to hear his engine start before she tells Capable what happened.

Of course, what she walked in on was Furiosa pinning Max to the floor while he tried to tell her to stop keeping guns everywhere if she wanted to foster Cheedo, which is not a topic that Capable knows anything about, but it makes Toast feel better to tell her the story. All of it. From the beginning. The long sleeves in summer. The shaking nightmares Cheedo gets when she naps in Dag’s truck between appointments, or in Furiosa’s truck on the way to events. The bruises that Toast glimpsed, once, changing in the trailer together. The rifle incident. The guns that started appearing everywhere immediately thereafter. The tentative foster plan. Max’s arrival. The cop hypothesis. And then yesterday’s scuffle.

It takes so long that Pi squirms out of Capable’s arms and starts sniffing around on the desk and teething at Toast’s fingers. And Cheedo still doesn’t show up.

Capable’s hands are shaking when Toast stops talking. She pets Pi repetitively, mindlessly, but she’s trembling and there are tears in her eyes. “I want to talk to Angharad,” she says. “She has to know a way to help.”

***

Furiosa walks into the diner. Furiosa walks into the diner and no one moves. Furiosa walks into the diner and no one moves because the only other person _in_ the diner is Max. He’s got something on the counter in front of him that he was fussing with when she walked in, but he just stands there holding a wrench as she approaches.

They stare across the counter at each other.

Valkyrie is around the corner at Angharad’s house. An hour ago, Angharad called the barn, so incomprehensibly angry that having her on speakerphone in the office spooked Pearl in the indoor, demanding answers on why they haven’t already called child protection and how could she help this situation mobilize and get Cheedo out and, for the love of anything anyone had ever respected or thought to worship, why did Furiosa have to pull out an illegal rifle on Cheedo’s father instead of calling the cops?

Toast stared them down the whole time. As soon as Angharad hung up, she asked if they wanted to fire her.

“I want to kiss you and then slap you,” Valkyrie said. “But I guess we’re maybe finally doing something.” And then she bullied Furiosa into making sure Max was going to be hip-deep in the mess with them.

Furiosa exhales and looks at the device on the counter. “Knee brace?”

Max nods without taking his eyes off of her.

“You got my shoulder pretty good,” she says. “Cute trick.”

He snorts. “Yeah?”

“No. It bloody hurt.” She climbs onto a stool and folds her arms on the countertop. “Cup of coffee?”

Max blinks, then straightens up. She studies the brace while he pours, and points at it with her prosthetic when he slides the mug across the counter.

“Can I…?”

Max stiffens and thinks about it for a couple seconds before he nods.

Furiosa dumps cream in her coffee and tugs the brace across the counter. It’s obviously homemade and unashamedly simple: two trailer hinges bound with a trio of belts, two above and one below the knee. There’s also some kind of ring that looks like it might have come off an antique ankle brace attached to the bottom of the hinges.

She pokes at the joints of the hinges. “Needs oiling.”

Max grunts.

“We’ve got plenty in the garage if you want some.”

Max doesn’t respond to that.

Furiosa sips her coffee and watches him shuffle around behind the counter, organizing menus and fussing with rolls of silverware – anything to avoid looking in her direction. She lets him be. There are fans churning the air in the diner, and it’s hot outside.

Capable wanders out of the kitchen after a few minutes with a great pale puppy of a human being following her. Nux nods at Furiosa as Capable empties the coffee pot and sets a fresh one brewing, and then they climb onto stools next to each other at the far end of the counter.

Caught between them and Furiosa, Max returns to his brace and begins to pack it away.

“Cheedo hasn’t shown up today,” Furiosa says. Nux and Capable go quiet. “Got a couple people worried.”

Max stares at her.

“Angharad is one of the worriers.”

Max takes a deep breath as the front door opens. It’s a gaggle of tourists in obscenely-bright clothes, and Furiosa counts at least three children under the age of five. She drains her coffee and stands up. Capable has already fled back to the kitchen, but Nux is beaming at the kids and shouldering past Max as he promises them crayons and paper.

Furiosa steps over to the register and digs out her wallet.

Max shakes his head at her. “On the house.”

“The ‘house’ is Angharad,” she mutters, and elbows him out of her way to drop a ten in the till. “Medical discharge retirement goes a long way.” She leaves him to the tourists and walks into the parking lot.

Her truck is waiting, a dark malachite green under a layer of dust, bales of hay strapped down in the bed. She gets the key in the ignition and twists, then pauses, watching the door swing open again.

Max is squinting in the sunlight. She rolls down her window, and he hops up and hooks his elbows over the edge so he doesn’t fall backwards.

“How many witnesses?” he asks.

Furiosa takes a deep breath before she speaks. “Toast is the only one who has actually seen bruises, and that was months ago. We can confirm verbal abuse, but the rest is circumstantial.” She scratches at her hair. “Long sleeves in summer, reoccurring nightmares, flinching at sudden movements… you saw her yesterday. All we really have is random disappearances like today. Sometimes it’s three or four days in a row: missing lessons, missing work, making plans she was excited about and not showing up. Her friends used to come to the barn looking for her, say she’d been in school that day but never met them after.” She rests her arms on the steering wheel. “We need more, don’t we?”

“What do her parents do?”

“Mother’s a nurse. Father’s in insurance.”

“Nice house?”

“Nice as it gets around here.”

Max closes his eyes and rubs one hand over his face. “Pen? Paper?” She has a flyer from a tack shop on the passenger seat and a pen in her center console. Max scribbles a number on it and hands it back. “I can’t do much, but if anything happens…”

She nods as she folds up the flyer and tucks it into her pocket. “Thanks.”

Max shakes his head and hops off her truck. She watches him limp inside, then knocks the truck into reverse and takes the hay home.

***

After the tourists leave, the diner goes back to solitary customers wanting tea and a sandwich. Max occasionally hears murmurs of Capable and Nux talking in the kitchen, but there’s nobody in the front; it’s him and his knee brace until Nux yelps and something metal crashes against the floor.

Capable is giggling when Max pokes his head into the kitchen: hysterical, hyper-caffeinated giggles that bubble out of her chest as she leans against the counter next to the stove. There’s a spray of grease leading to an upturned pan on the floor a few meters away, and Nux is cradling his right hand.

“Sorry,” Capable gasps. “But that was _such_ a _bad_ idea.” She bends to pick up the pan and carry it to the sink and examine it. “I think we’re alright. Max, would you grab the grease cleaner?”

Max grunts and ducks into the cleaning closet for the bottle and a scrub, then tosses them at Nux’s head. “Don’t tell me,” he says when Nux opens his mouth. “I don’t need to know.”

Nux’s face goes as red as his hand. He bobs his head and scurries over to the spill.

Max goes back to the front, looks around at the empty post-lunch, pre-dinner space, and digs out his phone to make a call.

***

There’s an extra light when he pulls up at the barn: a torch wavering in the darkness beyond the house.

Furiosa hears him climb out. “She’s up here,” she calls. “Come see.”

She’s standing in a dirt pen fenced out against the side of the house. Two horses are hanging their heads over the fence of the next paddock – one of them is the orange-ish one Valkyrie was riding. They’re alternating between watching the humans and the pile of black and gray fur under the roof of a little three-sided wooden shelter in the middle of the pen. Pi is flopped out across the haunches of a mostly-black dog that looks more like a wolf, and the Rottweiler curled next to it. The adult dogs are laying head-to-tail, both heads turned to study their audience, mouths open and tongues lolling.

“Are they mates?” Max asks. “Like…” he gestures meaninglessly with his hands.

“They’re both male and neutered,” Furiosa says. “At best, they tolerated each other until a few days ago.”

Max grunts acknowledgment.

“She’s not yours,” Furiosa says to the dogs. “She’s not your puppy. She has to go home now.”

The Rottie warbles sadly at her.

“I know, big dog. I know.” Furiosa glances at Max, then hands him the torch. “I’ll get her. The wolfdog might bite you.”

She’s wearing shorts again, legs stark white in the light cast by the torch, dark hair pronounced against the pale skin. She strokes the Rottie’s head as she kneels, then sets her stump on the wolfdog’s flank. He makes a frustrated grumbling noise as she gathers Pi up and withdraws, and then both dogs bounce up to follow her out of the pen, but there’s no snapping or snarling. They wind around her and Max as she hands Pi over.

“Thanks.” He hands back the torch. She clicks it off.

“Sure,” she says. She looks down. “Knee okay?”

He strapped on his brace after the pan/grease incident. “Yeah. Shoulder?”

“Still attached.”

He smiles.

She’s leaning against the fence while the dogs stare at them, and the horses have gone to find better entertainment, and the property all around them is dark except for a light in a single window of the house. The stars are out, wild, above them.

“You ever been on a horse?”

The question startles, and he shakes his head. She’s a smear in the dark that focuses as his pupils adjust, but he can still see the shift of her weight, the change in her shoulders.

“Would you… want to? Ride?”

Max looks towards the pastures but sees nothing except black and blue. “Nah, I… I’ll stay on the ground. With the dogs.”

He can see well enough to register her nod. The “okay” is quiet.

Pi whines, so he resettles her against his shoulder. “Knee wouldn’t like it, probably. Too bouncy.” He steps against the fence next to her so he has a better shelf for Pi.

Furiosa tilts her chin back to look up at the stars. “Only one gait is bouncy; if you rode Western, you’d learn to sit it. It would take time, but…” She trails away. “Valkyrie could teach you.”

“You do the – the other stuff. Jumps.”

“Cross-country. And stadium. And dressage – the one where it looks like they’re dancing.” She raises her stump and snorts. “I should be better at Western; you’re only supposed to use one hand.”

“Ah.” Max looks down at Pi. Her bandage is gone, the cut scabbed over when he brushes a fingertip across it. “You don’t like Western?”

She shrugs. “I grew up jumping and riding in English and dressage saddles on the flat. Western for me is like if you took out the front seat of your car and put a couch there. It doesn’t feel right.” She looks at Max. “But if you have a bad knee, it would be easier.”

They’ve very close, there in the dark. It’s been four days since she walked out to meet him with a shotgun. And something warm is lodged in Max’s gut.

“It’s late,” he says. “I should take her home.”

Furiosa nods. She straightens up off the fence and brushes her palm over his shoulder as she passes. “Good night.”

Max blinks, grunts, swallows. “G’night.”

***

Furiosa waits to hear the engine before she walks back to the house. Valkyrie was falling asleep on the couch when she went to look for Pi; she’s passed out when Furiosa gets back, Paddy stretched across her legs. Furiosa swats her ankles as Jackson bounds around the couch to check that she’s alive. “Go to bed, Val. You’ll kill your back out here.”

“I’ll kill _your_ back,” Valkyrie mutters without opening her eyes. She flops one arm out to scratch Jackson’s ears as he shoves his nose into her ribs and whines. “Hi, big dog. What’s up?”

Rei is curled against the back of the couch. Furiosa points at him, then at Nahi and murmurs “Stay” before she climbs the stairs two at a time and locks her bedroom door behind her. She has _maybe_ five minutes before the dogs follow her and start crying loud enough to get Valkyrie off the couch.

She drops onto the bed and takes one deep breath before she slides her hand under the waistband of her shorts. She’s already nerve-tight and shivery, so she almost flinches at the first touch, trying so hard not to think. Ignore the leather jacket. Ignore the sleeping puppy. Ignore the car. Ignore the hands.

It’s been too long. She’s shaking, eyes closed, and not thinking doesn’t work – he was right there in the dark; she knows what he feels like up against a wall, under her, soft and strong and stubborn; she rocks against her fingers and drags in a breath. It’s been too long, but she can work herself like a machine, and she can feel the edge coming, and there’s Max there: scarred-up forearms and scruff and leather and self-cut hair, and she hisses through her teeth and stares at her eyelids and rocks hard, riding herself through it, so she doesn’t have to go back.

The dogs are scratching at the door by the time she’s done. She can’t lie there and breathe; she has to get up and let them in, then go wash her hands. The lights are out downstairs. And then she’s back in bed.

Both dogs sniff around suspiciously, but when they find no blood or bodies they flop down together and pass out. It takes longer for Furiosa to fall asleep. She stares out the window in the direction of Keeper’s house and tries to get control of her brain and heartbeat, and not think about the smell of leather, or the light playing off of the diner’s countertop.

***

Valkyrie is already making coffee when she goes downstairs in the morning. She glances over her shoulder as Furiosa pauses next to the counter. “Have fun last night?”

“Huh?” She pads over to the cabinet where they keep the dog food.

“You only kick the dogs out of your room for one thing, and you haven’t since this Cheedo mess started. So I’m going to bully you about it. Did you have fun?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The dogs’ bowls are sitting on the counter. Valkyrie cuts in front of her before she can reach them.

“Sorry, who dated you for the entirety of your teenage years? Who spent eight more saving your butt? Who’s been living with you for the last _six_?” She’s grinning, and sticks out her tongue when Furiosa hip-checks her out of the way. “Did someone get some over-the-clothes action in the driveway with our grumpy neighborhood cop?”

“Nothing happened,” Furiosa mutters. “He ca- he showed up, grabbed the dog, and left. I was bored. That’s the story.”

“Oh, boo.” Valkyrie kicks her shin lightly. “Just because my potential dating pool is nonexistent for a three-hour radius doesn’t mean yours has to be. You have his number. You’re obviously both adults. And thinking about Cheedo all the time is only going to make you cranky and stressed and piss off the horses.”

“Valkyrie,” Furiosa says mildly. “Do you want me to fuck an ex-cop just so he’ll testify for us?”

“I said no such thing.”

“Didn’t ask about what you said.”

“Na na na, didn’t ask about what you _said_ ,” Valkyrie mimics back. “Listen, Fury. I love you; you’re an amazing, driven woman; you have no sense of self-preservation, and you’re impossible to date because you won’t make time for anyone unless they’re literally about to die. Take three hours and ask the pitbull cop out for a drink and go get laid. Then tell me all about it and help me blackmail him so – joking! Joking!” She fends off the faux-punch Furiosa throws her way, then ducks below her guard and grabs her under the ribs.

“I’m going to fill your pillow with dog shit,” Furiosa warns as Valkyrie heaves her over her shoulder and carries her on a triumphant lap of the kitchen. “I hate you.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” Valkyrie smacks her ass once and then sets her down, taking the responding yank on her hair with good cheer. She’s grinning like a demon.

The dogs are staring at them, heads titled sideways.

***

Furiosa is on a stocky brown horse whose shoulders are almost level with the top of Max’s head. They’re walking out of the ring as Pi leads the way up the drive. He watches as she does something with her prosthetic and then lets it hang loose against her side, riding with only one hand. She lets the horse stretch its neck down to touch noses with Pi.

“We’ll be gone this weekend,” she says. “Me and Valkyrie. Got an event, five hours away. Leave before dawn on Saturday. Get back late. Toast will be here, maybe Cheedo. If you don’t mind giving one of them a key, they can bring her back to your house when they finish here.”

“Okay,” Max says. He watches her swing the horse around to walk up the drive next to them. “Pretty,” he says, stumbles when she looks at him. “The horse.”

“Her name is Gen,” Furiosa volunteers.

“Okay.”

Her mouth twitches. “When’s Pi getting her shots?”

“Friday. Tomorrow.”

“Dag’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. She’ll take care of her.”

Max grunts. “Parents give her that name?”

“Dag? No. I don’t know her birth name.” She moves the horse a step to the side so Pi can’t get under her hooves. “She’s an honest woman, and she takes good care of the animals. That’s all I worry about.” Her face has closed off, so Max doesn’t press the question.

Valkyrie has a lesson going in the barn: a crooked old woman on a horse with the color scheme of a cow.

“That horse is Harley,” Furiosa says. “He takes a lot of our beginner adults. If you were to do Western we’d put you on Tripp, the chestnut you’ve seen Valkyrie riding.”

Max nods.

Furiosa shifts her weight backwards, and Gen stops. “Only if you want.”

“Maybe,” Max says. “After you get back from your event thing.”

Furiosa kicks her feet free and swings her leg over Gen’s rump. She lands on the opposite side of the horse from Max, but he catches the fraction of a second of her grin.

***

 As far as Max can tell, Dag is the vet for every non-human mammal within a hundred kilometers. He sees two cats, a ferret, three other dogs, two rats, and a teacup pig after ten minutes in the waiting room. Eventually, they are ushered into the back, and Dag appears in a professional white coat with her hair in a single thick braid. She does a lot of muttering to herself, and Max is trying to figure out the mortality rate of asking a SASR veteran out for coffee, so he doesn’t register much beyond being asked an array of questions that he fumbles through answering while Dag palpates and inspects and listens, getting handed a box of worming medication, and being told to hold Pi still for her vaccinations.

Constantly meeting in the dark is probably a bad idea. It’s going to give him high blood pressure, at any rate. And then he asks “Does Furiosa date?” as Dag is stripping off her gloves and immediately regrets it.

“Not that I know of; she’s quite private.” Dag winks at him. “I’m sure she won’t bite unless asked.”

Max tucks his chin against his chest and looks at Pi. She seems perfectly cheerful for just having had every inch of her body examined, and she’s happy to teeth at his fingers when he offers them.

Dag comes around to his side of the table and sets a hand on the middle of his chest, startling him so hard he jerks. She waits until he meets her eyes. “My oldies,” she says, “seemed like perfectly decent people. At seventeen, I told them they’d been raising a girl, not a boy. Haven’t seen ‘em since.” She pats his chest. “Furiosa’s had two chances to kill you and hasn’t, mate. Asking her for a drink won’t be the tipping point.”

Max grunts.

Darkness and stars and a young dog and big guns and a shattering, razor-blade smile. It’s going to kill him.

***

Furiosa’s phone rings at ten on Saturday in the middle of strapping on Roman’s boots. She’s been awake since two, started driving at three-thirty, and they’ve been here less than an hour. She smooths down the Velcro and stands, groping for her phone as Valkyrie swoops in. “Yeah?”

“Hey, Lady Fury.”

“Nada,” she says, and steps into the trailer’s miniscule tack room. “They let you out of Afghanistan?”

“Yeah, I told them I’d turn into a pile of sand if they kept sending me back, so they let me come home. I haven’t eaten an MRE in a year. Personal security detail life is great. When do we get to meet all the ponies you’ve been rescuing?”

‘We’ is Nada and her roommate/life-partner Amí. Both explosives experts. Both Filipin@. Both entirely enamored with dirt bikes.

“The horses can’t come to you; you have to come to Citadel.” Furiosa runs her fingers over Sis’ bridle. “You got some good oil for me?”

“On your little cop guy? Yeah. Grim stuff. He was a Fed police sergeant, from Canberra. There was a car accident about ten years ago, hit-and-run. He wasn’t in the car, just the wife and an infant son, both vegetables. He was convinced it was a homicide, went so hard at it they suspended him until he had a psych eval. Came back, got shot in the knee within six months and didn’t have an explanation for how it happened, got punted onto a desk job. Stayed three more years, then started drifting. Was a mechanic in Adelaide for a couple years, but he’s been roaming around for the last year and a half. You said he showed up two months ago?”

“Yeah.” Furiosa peeks out of the tack room. Valkyrie, Roman, and Yabby – their fifteen-year-old student – are gone. Sis is still tied to the trailer, half-tacked. Her rider is Piker: a skinny, pale fourteen-year-old who looks more like she’s twelve. Furiosa steps back inside. “There’s nothing about animals, is there?”

“Like, abuse? Nah. There’s nothing about pets or anything. He may have worked alongside a couple K-9 units doing missing persons, but that’s it.”

“And just the son?”

“Yeah. Sprog – what the fuck, man. Here, I’m gonna go adopt a baby and name them ‘Baby’. Or ‘Child’. What the fuck.”

Piker hops into the tack room and grabs Sis’ bridle.

Furiosa rubs at her eyebrows. “Okay. Thanks, Nada. I have to run. Tell Amí I said hi.”

“Cheers, Lady Fury.” Nada hangs up.

Furiosa closes her eyes and rests her forehead against the cold steel wall. She gets maybe five seconds before Piker asks for help getting Sis to take the bit. She makes a fist so tight her fingernails bite into her palm, then steps out of the trailer to wrestle a pony.


	4. Saw the Stars Out in Front of You

The drive home is quiet. Yabby and Piker curl up in the back seat and pass out; Valkyrie kicks her feet up on the dash and hums along with the radio. The road skims by under the headlights, the verge yellow and dead. She keeps them slow. Road train speed. Won’t endanger the horses.

“Nada called,” Valkyrie murmurs. “What did she say?”

“There’s a dead wife and kid. Car accident. Didn’t take it well. About ten years ago.” Furiosa rubs the back of her neck. “He’s fine.”

“Okay.” Valkyrie leans her head against the seat. “They did well today.”

“They did,” Furiosa agrees. “I was surprised at Roman.”

“He’s okay for the basics. More than that… well, that’s why we don’t use him. And Sis was good.”

Furiosa smiles. “She was so disappointed it was only dressage.”

“Well, no shit. She’s a spunky little pony; she goes “where are my bloody jumps?”” Valkyrie pokes her. “If she was bigger she’d be perfect for you.”

Furiosa snorts. “I’ll stick with Gen and Pearl.”

Valkyrie waves a dismissive hand at her, then folds her arms behind her head and starts humming again.

Furiosa keeps driving.

She wasn’t driving when they hit the IED, out on the Afghan-Pakistan border, and flipped over. She remembers the rise – she’d grown up with it, the first lurch up – but they kept going, until the sky was down, and most of the after is fragments. Amí’s spine broken, left eye ruined. Furiosa’s hand and wrist pinned under a couple tons of smoking steel and rubber. Valkyrie, Nada, and Polly in the truck behind theirs, slamming on the brakes. Lots of yelling.

She doesn’t think about it as much as she once did.

She liked the road trains, the ones so long and heavy you’d have to drive them off a cliff to get them flipped. It was like a game. Don’t get jack-knifed. Keep them balanced.

“Do you ever think about what we did, when we were in?”

Valkyrie sighs and checks that the teenagers are still asleep. “You ask that every year. No. It gives me shakes. I’d rather think about the horses.”

Furiosa glances at her. “Then why do we deserve to get Cheedo out?”

“It’s not what we deserve; _Cheedo_ deserves to get out. We’ve talked about this.” Valkyrie waves to indicate the trailer behind them. “This, the barn, the dogs, the kids – getting them out, giving them space to _be_ – it’s trying to throw something on the other side of the cosmic scale. We were young, and then we were reckless, and then we were in the thick of it and there wasn’t anything else we could think of to do. We did bad things. We don’t have to be proud; we shouldn’t be proud. But we don’t have to jump off a bridge either. Okay?”

“Okay,” Furiosa says.

Valkyrie punches her shoulder, then holds out her hand. Furiosa lifts her prosthetic off the wheel and lets her arm rest on the center console so Valkyrie can wrap her hand around the metal fingers. “You’re allowed to be happy.”

Furiosa keeps driving.

***

He gave Toast his spare key on Saturday morning; on Saturday night her car is in his driveway and he walks inside to find her and Cheedo and Pi stretched out on his couch, watching something about sharks. Pi jumps off the couch and scampers over to him, tail whap-whap-whapping against everything she passes. He kneels slowly to rub her ears while the television clicks off. Cheedo is smiling uncertainly at him, arms folded over her chest, sleeves pulled down to her knuckles.

“One second,” Max says. He pads into the bedroom to his safe and pulls out five twenties.

Cheedo sees him coming back and starts shaking her head. “You don’t have to; I haven’t been around much…” She trails off as he holds out the cash and waits, and then Toast elbows her, and she reaches out and folds her fingers around the money. “Thank you,” she mumbles.

Max nods and picks up Pi so she can yip her goodbyes to the women as he walks them to the door. He locks eyes with Toast as they step outside, and she pauses while Cheedo climbs into her car. “She okay?” Max asks.

“She won’t say what happened,” Toast mutters back. “But she’s normally not allowed out this late. She turned up in the middle of the day, cheery as could be. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Max nods. He waits for Toast to get in her car and start the engine before he goes back inside. The house has a single floor, so he sets Pi down while he putters around getting ready for bed. She likes to follow him around and sniff everything, but gets upset when she thinks the shower is going to devour him, so he has to be fast about rinsing the grease off or else she’ll start to cry. Then it’s to bed; hers on top of his, so she can peek her head over in the middle of the night and confirm that he hasn’t been kidnapped by shower monsters.

***

It’s after midnight when they pull up to the barn after dropping the kids off at their respective houses. The horses are tired. The humans are tired. The dogs are ecstatic that they haven’t been abandoned.

Toast did the evening feeds, and Sis and Roman got their dinner on the ride home, so there’s not much to do beyond get them to their paddocks and then crawl back to the house.

“Don’t set an alarm,” Valkyrie tells her. “You spent eleven hours driving; don’t even think about it.”

Rei and Nahi pile onto the bed while Furiosa rinses a day of travel and horse grit out of her skin. Her shoulder and stump ache from wearing her prosthetic all day. But her bed is soft, the dogs are happy to see her, and the world is still grinding along on its weary track.

***

Pi’s bed has slightly raised edges that she can easily climb over, but she’s normally happy to curl in a corner and snore away until Max gets up. Sunday morning, she breaks her sound-sleeping streak to climb out somewhere around dawn and park herself on the edge of his pillow, then starts chewing on his hair until he wakes up. As soon as his eyes are open, she tries to slobber in them.

He has to pick her up to make her stop. He lies on his back and holds her over his head while she wriggles and tries to nibble on his fingers. “Do you need to go out? Already?”

Her tail beats mercilessly against his forearms.

“Fine.”

He opens the back door so she can escape and pours breakfast into her food bowl, then carries it outside with her water. She’s doing laps of the garden.

When she realizes that food is available, she trundles over. The sun is only halfway over the horizon. Max thinks about making coffee. Max thinks about going back to bed. Going back to bed is an excellent idea. He rests his elbows on his knees, arms folded, and sets his forehead on them. And then he falls asleep.

***

Rei stays with Furiosa until she wakes up. There’s sun streaming through the windows. Her whole throat is dry. She swallows and sits up, rubbing Rei’s shoulders while she looks around, then crawls out of bed.

Valkyrie’s left a note on the kitchen counter: _Rei wouldn’t come down, didn’t get breakfast_.

Furiosa digs out the dog food while she starts coffee. “You didn’t have to stay, old man. You could have eaten.” She leans down to scratch his back.

They have just enough milk left for her to make oatmeal. She wolfs it down, standing at the counter, then toes on her runners and takes her coffee outside with Rei padding along at her hip. Jackson and Paddy are slumped in the shadow of the barn, and Valkyrie has Lily ground-tied in the grooming stall when Furiosa pokes her head in. Nahi is probably patrolling the back paddock.

She circles around to Gen’s paddock to say hi and check her water, then does the same for the four geldings in the back. When she calls Nahi’s name the horizon stays empty.

Furiosa and Rei search each paddock, each run-in stall, and then the feed room and the storage area in the back of the barn. No big black wolfdog is found.

“Nahi came out with you, right?” she asks Valkyrie, still in her shorts and singlet, watching Lily march a trot around the rail of the indoor. “He’s not hiding somewhere in the house?”

“I let him out. Haven’t seen him since.”

***

Max jerks awake hard and almost falls over. His knee protests bitterly.

The sun is actually in the sky now, and has done an excellent job of burning the back of his neck and head. He pokes the tender skin, regrets it, and calls for Pi.

She yips from behind him. She’s been lounging in the shade of the covered porch, on a chair no one has sat in for at least half a year. There’s another dog under the chair: lanky, with long black-and-gray hair and yellow eyes.

“I know you,” Max mutters.

The wolfdog gives him a slow blink and sets his head on his paws.

Max walks into the house. Pi jumps off her chair to follow him, and then the wolfdog slips through the door before he can close it. Max splashes water on his face and strips off his shirt, digs out a cleaner one and jeans he can buckle his brace over, makes a mental note to do laundry, stuffs his feet into his boots, and pulls Pi’s harness off the dresser. “Let’s go, Pi. And…Wolf.”

There’s most of a kilometer between his house and the barn. The wolfdog walks alongside Pi until she gets too tired to keep going, and then Max picks her up and the adult dog drops back to his heel. Pi starts to whine as they approach the gate.

The barn is quiet. Nobody is in the outdoor ring, but the Aussie dog comes sprinting around a corner, barking until she skids up to them, does a couple laps around Max’s knees, then bolts back up the driveway, still yipping.

The wolfdog pokes Max’s hip with his nose.

He kneels to set Pi down, then holds out a hand for the wolfdog to sniff.

Gravel crunches. “ _Nahi_ ,” Furiosa yells. She stalks down the driveway, an empty coffee cup dangling from her fingers. She’s dressed like it’s the middle of the night and she’s bringing Pi out to be picked up, not like she’s in the middle of her workday. She’s not even wearing her prosthetic. “Was he at your house?”

Max nods. Nahi licks his fingers. “I didn’t know if he’d get in my car.”

“He might have.” Furiosa crouches next to them. “Thanks for bringing him back.” She tickles Pi’s ears, then rubs Nahi’s side until he slides onto his back and lets her scratch his belly. His flailing tail sweeps gravel everywhere. “You working today?”

Max shakes his head.

Furiosa raises her empty cup. “Coffee? As thanks?”

He blinks. “Um. Sure.”

The dogs tail them up to the house, and the yellow one – Rei, he remembers – rejoins them at the front door.

He’s barely been inside before; he’s seen a sitting area off to the right and stairs to the left, and that’s all. Now she leads him around the stairs to a kitchen that isn’t much bigger than the one in the office. There’s half a pot of coffee left on the counter. Furiosa pulls a fresh mug from a shelf and fills it, then slides cream towards him. “You want sugar?”

“If you have it.”

She nods. “Valkyrie’s the only one – there.” She leans deep into a corner of a cabinet and pulls out a little porcelain bowl. She sets it down and produces a spoon before she turns to refill her own cup. “I’d offer lunch, but we’ve got cold cuts and… not much else.” She rinses the carafe, then jams it back into its holder.

Max grunts as he stirs his coffee. “How was the… the thing? Yesterday?”

Furiosa smiles. “Good. The thing was good. We had two teenagers, so in the youth division, riding at the novice level – very easy – so they had fun. The horses were fine. It was just a long day.” She dumps cream in her cup.

Max leans his right hip against the counter to take pressure off his bad knee. The coffee is strong enough to put in an engine. “You drive both ways?”

Her face changes. She straightens up, back to the counter, shoulders perpendicular to his. “Yeah.”

Max looks down. “HC-class license came up.”

Furiosa sips at her cup. “If you don’t want people to keep tackling you, you shouldn’t make it so obvious you’re a cop.”

He grunts. “Sorry.”

She reaches out and taps her mug against his. “I dug around on you, too. No hard feelings.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She drinks. “You could have been a mechanic here, too.”

“Nah,” he says. “Citadel’s already got one.”

“One who charges an arm and a leg.” She smirks at her own joke. “We do our own work when something goes wrong, unless it needs a fancy part.”

Max shrugs and drinks more coffee. The dogs are a pile against the wall.  “You got lessons today?”

“A few. Later. Everyone’s in church.”

Max nods.

Furiosa lets him drink more coffee in silence.

“How much?”

She cocks her head and makes a questioning noise.

“For a lesson.”

Her expression clears. “Twenty-five for a half-hour; forty for an hour.” She leans back against the counter and watches him.

Max decides that the dogs are probably safe to look at. Pi is worn out from her adventures; Nahi and Rei are happy to sprawl on the cold floor next to her. “You said Western might work.”

“It’s still doing lots with your legs. Gripping.” Furiosa taps the inside of her thigh with her stump. “Will you have problems with that?”

Max shrugs. “Bending is the trouble.”

Furiosa swipes a dribble of coffee from the side of her mug and licks if off her thumb. “I’d try you for an English lesson, then a Western, see which you like more. Tripp’s the only Western-trained horse we’ve got here. But it’d be your call.”

“Okay.”

“I’m the one who re-injured your knee. Would you want me to teach you? Or Valkyrie?”

“You,” Max says without thinking about it. He drains his mug to hide his face.

Furiosa watches him with a strange little half-smile. “Okay,” she says.

***

On gut-wrench impulse she drags him up to Pearl and Pee-Wee’s paddock. Both trot over to the fence to investigate the unfamiliar human.

“You’ve met Harley,” she says, then hops onto the fence so she can scratch Pearl’s withers. “Pearl does the rest of our beginner adults. The mini is Pee-Wee.”

Max wrinkles his forehead and points between the two. “Related?”

“Pee-Wee’s twenty. She’s six. He’s like a security blanket for her.”

“Six is young, right?”

Furiosa nods. “She’s good with people on her back, but if she gets stressed she won’t eat.”

Max hums as he leans against the fence. Pee-Wee pokes at the knee of his jeans in search of food; Pearl stretches out her neck to sniff the hand that Max extends, palm-up. Pi’s leash is wrapped around his other hand; she knows enough to stay on their side of the fence.

“Fingers flat,” Furiosa murmurs. “You wouldn’t be the first person to have a finger mistaken for a carrot.”

Max smiles a little, then wider when Pearl lips at his palm. “I’ve seen you ride her,” he says, like it’s a revelation. “Jumping.”

“Last week?”

He nods. “She… you… looked good.”

Furiosa snorts. “You don’t want to know what ‘bad’ looks like.” She knuckles overlapping circles on Pearl’s side, kicking up a small plume of dust. “She’s been rolling. Needs a good curry.” She glances at Max from the corner of her eye. “You got somewhere to be?”

As it turns out, he doesn’t.

Pearl is a big horse with thin skin, and she doesn’t ground-tie particularly well, so Furiosa puts her on cross-ties in the grooming stall. She shows Max how to lead Pee-Wee inside, then has him unhook the lead line and lets the mini wander as he pleases. He gets back to the barn entrance, realizes that the sun is hot and all the grass is behind fences, then retreats indoors to headbutt their thighs for attention.

Max has no idea what he’s doing with a curry comb, which makes him gentle, which Pearl appreciates, so Furiosa takes her own curry to Pee-Wee’s coat to keep him from destroying Max’s knee and provides instruction from a distance. A lot of it is “Circles… no, _circles_ , not just brushing her with the curry,” and “you need to finish that spot and move before she decides to step on you.” There’s some “yes, that’s a happy face,” and a single “just shove her off – no, really, _shove_ ” when Pearl does actually step on his foot. He’s wearing work boots. He’s fine. Then she has to leave Pee-Wee and the new Pee-Wee-sized pile of fur next to him and show Max the difference between a hard and soft brush. He understands the distinction, but misses the relevance of the latter.

“It’s a nice note to end with,” is what Furiosa eventually explains it with. “Like sweeping up at the end of the day.”

Max finally nods, and she almost backs him up against the wall. It’s cooler inside the high-roofed barn than it is outside, but both of their shirts are clingy with sweat, and Furiosa is pretty sure the heat is killing her brain cells. She ducks into the office to fill a water bottle and find Toast and Cheedo cleaning tack three millimeters in front of a rotating fan. All of the dogs are in the room, sprawled out somewhere in the track of the fan’s breeze.

“You should invest in air conditioning,” Toast tells her.

“No.”

“You can take it out of my paycheck?”

“Ask Valkyrie.”

“She says if you buy a unit for the office you’ll make her buy something for the house,” Cheedo says. She’s wearing a shirt that Furiosa knows belongs to Dag because it has the name of some band Furiosa has never heard of on it and an unreasonable number of flowers, and the sleeves almost reach Cheedo’s elbows. But it’s not a jumper, and there are no visible bruises on Cheedo’s forearms.

“Valkyrie doesn’t understand that most people don’t consider forty degrees a comfortable temperature,” Furiosa says. “Max! Water?”

Max sticks his head through the door, nods at her, then squints at Cheedo. “I know that band.”

Cheedo tucks her chin into her chest. “It’s Dag’s. My mom doesn’t like me coming home with messy clothes.”

Max frowns, but doesn’t say anything. His fingertips brush against Furiosa’s palm when she hands him a bottle and steps past him into the aisle.

Pee-Wee is busy sniffing at the pile of his hair, but Pearl whickers when Furiosa approaches them again. “Hey, girl,” she murmurs. She waits for Max to wander back over. “This is the part where the horse tells you what they think,” she says as she lines her right shoulder up with Pearl’s, facing her tail, then leans her weight onto Pearl’s shoulder and doubles over to grab her right forefoot.

Having to hold one hoof up interferes with Pearl’s ability to dance around the grooming stall, so Furiosa gets four and a half seconds of calm standing before Pearl starts trying to kick her foot free. Furiosa ignores her, tightens her grip, and taps the frog with her stump while meeting Max’s eyes. “This triangle is the frog; it’s the only part of the foot with nerves. Stab it with the pick and you deserve to get kicked. Cleaning the V around it is the most important because that’s where crap gets stuck, rots, and causes infections.” She waits for Pearl to stop kicking for an entire second before she lets the foot drop and grabs the hoofpick. It’s pretty standard-issue: plastic grip, a metal pick on one side of the head and a stiff-bristled brush on the other. To demonstrate she holds it like she would a knife, with the head projecting from the bottom of her fist, pick pointed the same direction as her thumb. Then she tosses it to Max. “You need two hands to pick feet. If she decides to put her foot down and you let her – unless she’s completely off-balance – I’ll kick you in your bad knee.”

Max rolls his eyes. He turns the pick over in his hands, grips it the way she showed him, checks her expression to make sure he’s correct, then takes her place. “I’m not this flexible,” he mutters as he begins to bend.

“We could always start with the mini.”

Max straightens up so he can shoot a glance at Pee-Wee, whose feet require kneeling or crouching to clean, raises his eyebrows, looks at Pearl, looks back at Pee-Wee, then levels his gaze at Furiosa and says “Okay” in such a deadly serious voice that she has to grin.

“It’s a bad idea to kneel or sit next to a horse. But Pee-Wee doesn’t count.” She re-clips the lead onto Pee-Wee’s halter and folds herself onto the ground in front of him so he doesn’t get any smart ideas about wandering off while Max is working. “Just don’t let him stomp on your fingers.”

Max’s mouth twitches into a half-smile. He kneels at Pee-Wee’s right shoulder and tries to mimic her movement with Pearl. Pee-Wee stomps the foot once and snorts.

“You’re going to be supporting that quarter of their body when you pick it up,” Furiosa says. “Here.” She grabs Max’s hand and pulls it between Pee-Wee’s forelegs, then wraps it around his pastern. “With a full-sized horse, you’ve now got extra leverage to make them bend their knee and pick their foot up. For the hind legs they have hocks that work like our elbows, so they bend forward, but they’re generally more willing to pick up hind feet – and to kick you.” She watches the back of Max’s head nod, then remembers that she’s supposed to let go of his hand.

This time, Pee-Wee is more cooperative. Between his small feet and the hard, dry ground, there isn’t much that Furiosa expects Max to find, so she only checks the first foot to ensure that it’s satisfactory, then watches Max fumble through getting Pee-Wee to pick up his right hind with minimal commentary, weight carried on his good knee, jeans pulled tight over the curve of his ass.

Switching to the left side stumps him a bit.

“Lift up with your left hand. Same way.”

He figures it out after a few fumbling seconds. “Can you do this with your arm?” he asks as he’s still bent over the foot.

Furiosa nods even though he can’t see her. “I can only work the pick with my right hand, so when I do the right side I lift with my right, then swap the foot into the left. It’s not great, but it works.”

“Mmm.”

Pearl has been watching them the whole time, and she makes an impatient noise as Max sets down Pee-Wee’s last foot.

“Still want to try her feet?” Furiosa asks as she sets Pee-Wee free again.

Max bites his bottom lip, then nods twice, eyes flicking between Pearl and Furiosa.

“Come on, then. And remember what I said about dropping her feet.”

She gets another eye-roll for that one. Max flips the pick over in his hands and looks at her out of the corner of his eye for long enough that she starts shifting her weight in preparation for a strike, but then he walks over to Pearl’s left shoulder and bends over once more.

Pearl has not gained any patience since Furiosa’s demonstration, but Max makes a fair attempt to keep his hold on her foot in spite of her irritation. When he moves to her left hind she has to kick hard enough to almost strike the wall before he lets go.

Furiosa scratches Pee-Wee’s neck. “I’ll give you a pass on that one. Her legs are longer than your arms. But don’t end on that note.”

Max raises his eyebrows at her, then picks up the foot again.

Pearl gets her right forefoot out of Max’s hands without a sufficient fight for Furiosa’s tastes, but she doesn’t move off of the floor; she levels a stare at Max when he glances at her, waits for him to try again, and goes back to petting Pee-Wee.

In the end, Max escapes with all of his fingers intact and no damage to his knee, and they take the horses back outside as Valkyrie is throwing lunch hay over the fences. Then it’s indoors again to sweep up.

There’s a muck bucket in a rear corner of the grooming stall, but the loose hair requires a dust pan that lives in the tack room, so Furiosa has Max grab the grooming kit and follow her in there to show him where it goes.

“I do owe you a kick in the knee,” she says after she points him at the cubby where the kit lives.

Max hums and drops the kit in its place, but pulls out the hoofpick to feint at her when she’s busy looking for the dustpan.

She grabs his wrist and twists until his elbow locks. He rotates his entire body to pull her towards him, which is only a tactic that would make sense if he were significantly larger than her. Furiosa almost relaxes into dead weight to drop and take him out at the knees as a reflex, but instead keeps moving a full step past him so that _she’s_ dragging _him_ , then lets him go, pushes him against the wall, and steps in to wrap her hand around his throat.

“You really don’t learn, do you?”

Max shrugs. He flips the hoofpick around in his hand and taps the metal point against her side. “Dead.”

Furiosa shifts her grip so she’s holding his chin and twitches it hard to one side. “Neck broken. Dead.”

Max’s eyebrows hitch. He purses his lips and nods.

“Fool,” she mutters, and kisses him.

Max inhales sharply. The hoofpick rattles against the floor as his hands move to curve around her waist. He makes a small noise when she starts to pull back, chases her mouth until she laughs and leans in again, and all his muscles seem to loosen as he lets her trap his body against the wall.

She lets go of his chin so she can tangle her fingers in his hair, and the way he hums in response has her pressing closer, legs notched together. His right hand drops to curl around her thigh, trying to pull her further up and against him, so the heat between her legs can ride the line of his thigh, and maybe she groans a little at that and bites his bottom lip so he clutches her tighter, and rolls her hips so he makes that noise again.

She has to brace her stump against his shoulder to keep him from following her when she pulls back again. “We should probably talk about this.”

Max’s face flickers, but he catches the set of her jaw and nods. He mutters “Okay,” and lets go of her leg.

Furiosa drags in a breath. “You get one day off a week. I run a barn. With twelve horses. And four dogs. And I’m trying to prove that one of my students is being abused by her parents.”

“Yeah,” Max murmurs. “You are.”

She tugs on his hair as punishment for interrupting her, but his expression only softens further.

“This is probably a bad idea, Max.”

“Yeah?” His hand skates up her side. “Furiosa?”

She tamps down a shiver and knocks her forehead against his. “Yeah,” she mutters.

Max hums.

Furiosa rolls her eyes. “Go take your dog home.”

Max looks down at them. “You need to get off me, then.”

“Shut it.” She shoves off the wall and steps back, curling and uncurling her fist at her side. “See you tomorrow.”

Max bends at the waist to grab her hand. Her brushes his mouth over her dirt-smeared knuckles, then lets it drop. “Tomorrow,” he rumbles, and walks out of the tack room.

Furiosa watches his shadow disappear out the doorway, then punches the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of the horses in this are based on actual animals I know. Therefore, a note for the non-horsey folks: horses are measured in hands. A hand is 4 inches (~10 cm) despite what Max's back tattoo would have you believe. Pearl is about 17.1 (17 hands+1 inch); Pee-Wee is somewhere around 8 hands. For comparison, I am 5'7 (170 cm). Pearl's shoulders are taller than my head. Pee-Wee's barely reach my hip. I'd start with the mini, too, Max.


	5. I Belong to the Ground Now

It’s a long day, and a longer night. The skin on the back of Max’s neck is raw with sunburn, and all of his nerves are sizzling. He teaches Pi to play fetch from the shade of the porch, tossing one of her toys into the corners of the garden so she can barrel after it, then come skipping back. She doesn’t always understand that she has to drop the toy before he can throw it again.

The shower strips the dirt and sweat and smell of horses off his skin. It can’t rinse out the press of another body, or the tug of Furiosa’s hand in his hair.

He doesn’t really sleep. His hands are too twitchy. Pi decides that the shower monsters must be staging an attack and hops out of her bed to make camp on his pillow. Her tail whacks his ear a couple times before she curls up almost on top of his head, tries to chew on his fingers when he lifts a hand to pet her, then nestles her skull against his and goes to sleep.

Max stares at the ceiling until he blinks and recognizes dawn.

***

Valkyrie spent the better part of a decade living in the same rigorously-defined space as Amí, so she is completely unsurprised when their name buzzes her phone alive somewhere around sunrise.

“Hey, crow.”

“Amí.”

It’s a joke, almost. Like Nada. Nothing. To me. The kind of humor you develop when your life becomes so hysterically secret that you aren’t allowed to tell your family what country you’re in, or what branch of the military you were part of until you retire. Polly didn’t believe that Valkyrie and Furiosa were their given names for more than a year. Like it mattered.

“I’ve been told that we need to find our way to your hellish little corner of the Outback to meet some horses. And something about dogs.”

Valkyrie frowns at the level of sugar in the bowl, then scoops some into her coffee. “We have a spare bedroom, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Amí makes a noncommittal noise. “Nada’s trying to talk up some kind of reunion. See if Polly’s around. And those truckie friends of Furiosa’s.”

“Dixie and Kero?”

“Yeah. She’s sick of politicians, wants to have a night or two of talking to people she doesn’t have to take orders from.”

“So why are _you_ calling?” Valkyrie waves at Furiosa as she meanders down the stairs, winks at her, then mouths Amí’s name.

Furiosa nods, then pads over to nudge her out of the way so she can get to the coffee.

Amí clears their throat. “You ever get those dirt bikes working?”

“Oh, rack off!” Valkyrie slaps the counter.

“If there’s one thing the Outback’s good for…”

“We have horses.”

“We’ll help fix them?”

“We don’t need help.”

Amí snorts. “How many vets does it take to rewire a dirt bike?”

“ _One._ ”

“Ace. Fix ‘em up and we’ll have a lovely picnic somewhere in the bush.”

“You little-”

“I’ll tell Nada you’ve agreed. Cheers!” And then they hang up on her.

Furiosa has found a clean mug and is already in the process of chugging her first caffeine dose for the day. “What was that?”

Valkyrie sets down her phone and picks up her coffee. “Nada wants to come see the horses. Amí wants to come fix the dirt bikes. We’re not being given much of a choice. Oh, and Polly might come, and Nada wants you to call your truckie lady friends.”

“When?”

“Fuck if I know.”

Furiosa pulls a wry smile. “Sounds about right for those two.”

Valkyrie rolls her eyes and gulps down a mouthful of coffee, then kicks Furiosa’s shin. “Let’s go do feeds.”

***

Unfortunately, Valkyrie is smart enough not to corner her about Max. She waits until it’s obvious, until they’re within an hour of when he normally drops Pi off, until Furiosa is so high-strung that she pulls Gen out and starts tacking her up just for something to do, and then Valkyrie cocks her hip against the wall of the grooming stall and says “ _So_.”

“Stop it,” Furiosa mutters.

“Pitbull cop.”

“I see that grin.”

“Was here for a while.”

“I said stop.”

“Yesterday.”

“ _Val_.”

Valkyrie pouts, but she doesn’t continue the harassment. Which is irrelevant, at that point, because Furiosa can already feel the hook digging into her cheek.

“Isn’t this the part where you threaten his life if he hurts me or something?” Furiosa grumbles as she buckles the girth.

“Are you still capable of murdering him if he does?”

“Probably.”

“Then I stand ready to help you dump his corpse and arrange the evidence to support self-defense.”

“Great.” She fusses with the bridle for a few seconds before she pulls off the halter and slips the bit into Gen’s mouth and the crownpiece over her ears. “So glad I have you.”

Valkyrie beams as she throws up her arms and steps off the wall. Furiosa shakes her head, then wraps her arms around Valkyrie’s ribs and folds her chin over her shoulder. Valkyrie’s arms close on her like a warm vise. She’s wearing her favorite jacket: thick leather that reaches her knees, battered with age, adorned with crow feathers at the shoulders. “Still love me?”

“Yes, for some reason.”

Valkyrie tsks and swats her shoulder, then lets her go. She moves in front of Gen to pull her forelock loose from where it’s trapped under the crownpiece while Furiosa buckles the noseband and throatlatch. “Want a lift?”

“Sure.” Furiosa slides the reins over the fingers of her prosthetic, then bends her left knee. Valkyrie grabs her knee and shin, gives her a two-second countdown, and shoves upwards at the same time Furiosa jumps. She throws her right leg over Gen’s back, braces her prosthetic’s palm against the front of the saddle to steady herself, and slips her feet into the stirrups. Valkyrie hands her a dressage whip. “Thanks.”

“I’ve got Miss Giddy on Harley and her granddaughter on Lily at eleven-thirty, so keep an eye out for rogue ponies.” Valkyrie pats Gen’s flank. “Go impress pitbull cop.”

Furiosa groans and nudges Gen out of the barn while she locks her prosthetic’s fingers into position. “You can kick her,” she tells the mare. “Just this once. I’ll forgive you.”

Valkyrie cackles.

By sheer virtue of climbing on a horse (and a lifetime of getting tossed off as punishment for not paying attention) Furiosa manages to forget that Max is coming back, because Gen is being unusually fussy about moving forward and doesn’t want to concentrate. Then Furiosa almost has a heart attack when she hears a car engine.

It’s coming from the wrong direction to be Max, and she knows before it turns up the driveway that it’s going to be Miss Giddy’s ancient red Subaru Forester. Miss Giddy has tattoos on approximately the entire surface area of her body; her granddaughter has some absurd Americana-style flower child name that Furiosa and Valkyrie are both incapable of remembering for more than two days at a time. Miss Giddy is some distant relative of Angharad’s – a third cousin once or twice or maybe three times removed – and completely unwilling to cooperate with nine-tenths of all life forms. Her granddaughter, Valkyrie, and Harley are the only documented exceptions in Citadel.

Gen knows better than to waste time staring at the car. Furiosa shortens her reins a notch to tighten up her frame, sits a hair deeper in the saddle, and nudges her into a leg-yield down the long side of the arena. Miss Giddy and her granddaughter vanish into the barn.

They’re cantering the next time she hears an engine. Gen doesn’t like to keep the pace for more than a single circuit of the ring, so Furiosa has to keep pushing her up and forward and loses track of the noise until it stops.

***

It’s hard not to stare.

***

Furiosa’s boots were black when she bought them. So were her half-chaps. Only her breeches have remained completely black; there is so much dust and dirt ground into the leather or caught on the peach-fuzz of her helmet that it’s all permanently lodged on the color palate somewhere between dark gray and pale brown.

She makes Gen circle past Max once at the canter, cutting across the middle of the ring, then sinks her weight in her heels and pulls up in front of him. “Hey.”

Max is already smiling. There’s a beard coming in to frame his face. “Hey.”

Furiosa pulls the chain free of the hooks on her prosthetic so Gen can have a long rein. “Cheedo’s here. She looks okay.”

“Yeah?” Max bends over to pick up Pi, then steps closer to the fence.

Gen pricks her ears at the puppy and extends her muzzle until she has it millimeters from Pi’s face. Pi licks Gen’s nose, then sneezes. Gen wuffles at her for a few seconds before she blows a great snorty sigh that spatters mucus droplets across both man and puppy.

Furiosa leans back and laughs. “Welcome to horses, Rockatansky.” She pulls Gen in a tight circle while Max wipes at his face with a bare forearm. “She got you pretty good there.”

Max grunts agreement, then hops onto the bottom rail of the fence so he can swipe the snotty arm across her leg. Furiosa yelps and digs in with her outside heel so Gen swings her hind end away. Max grins.

Furiosa shakes her head at him. “Careful, Fool.”

Max’s eyebrows twitch. There are lights sparking behind his eyes. He climbs all the way onto the fence, one arm keeping Pi in place against his chest. “Yeah?” he says again.

For a second Furiosa considers snatching the dog and galloping away with her, but doesn’t want to risk spooking Gen or dropping her. She shakes her head at Max instead, then straightens Gen out and nudges her into a canter on a twenty-meter circle just out of Max’s reach, so he can’t do anything except sit on the fence and watch her.

Miss Giddy always wants to ride outside. Her granddaughter is too small to lead Lily without supervision, so she comes first, reins clutched in her tiny gloved hands, Valkyrie walking on Lily’s other side, idly finger-combing her mane. Then there’s Miss Giddy insistently tugging Harley along when he tries to stop and greet Paddy as the Aussie escorts them to the ring.

Furiosa pushes Gen out onto the rail, then halts her on the far side of the ring as Valkyrie unlatches the gate.

“G’day, Max,” Valkyrie calls with far too much cheer in her voice. “How ya going?”

Furiosa is too far away to hear what he says. She trots Gen across the open space until she starts pinning her ears and trying to dance sideways so she can kick Harley. Furiosa taps her flank with the end of the whip to make her pay attention, then leans to tousle Valkyrie’s hair with it. “Your student has forgotten how to measure stirrup length.”

Valkyrie sticks out her tongue at Furiosa before she goes to manage Miss Giddy’s granddaughter, who appears convinced that she can mount from the ground without assistance, if only she can make the stirrups long enough for her feet to reach them.

Furiosa has Gen side-step over to Max again. “You’re going to be late for work.”

Max glances at his watch. “Not quite yet.” He squints up at her. “Beard or no beard?”

“It’s your face,” she says, and refuses to look away on principle. “Do with it what you want.”

Max’s eyes have this unfortunate habit of crinkling up when he smiles. “Alright.”

***

They have Nux standing guard outside the diner, sweeping the walk.

Capable is staring into the bottom of her cup of coffee when the bells over the door chime and Max stumps in, brow already furrowed with confusion. Angharad is on the stool next to Capable. She hasn’t been crying, but she looks like she could use a couple minutes alone with a pile of junk and a crowbar.

Max clears his throat. He meets Capable’s eyes; she twitches her head a fraction of an inch to the side. “Hi, Max,” she says, straining to be cheerful.

His eyes dart between her and Angharad, and then he points at her cup. “Want more?”

She blinks. “Sure.”

Max empties the pot into her cup, then sets his hand down a centimeter in front of where Angharad is gripping her phone with white knuckles. “Tea?”

Angharad doesn’t answer. She doesn’t even blink. Capable starts to reach towards her, then stops. “Get a mug together, ask her in a minute.”

Max does as he’s told. But when he comes back, he leans across the counter directly across from Angharad and taps her phone. “Do we need to call someone?”

Angharad pulls her phone away from him.

“Angharad,” Capable murmurs. “Max was a cop.”

Angharad takes a deep breath, then looks up. She’s staring at Max, through him, past him, when she sets her phone down and lays her hands flat on the counter. “You ever had a bad breakup?”

Capable shakes her head.

Max frowns. “Not quite.”

Angharad’s phone buzzes. _Rick_ appears on the screen.

Angharad shoves it across the counter. “Three months, he left me alone. I can’t file for divorce until we’ve been separated for a year.” Her hands curl into fists. “I answered the first time.” Max goes to touch the phone, but she grabs his hands. “I told him I was busy with the diner, but if he thinks – thinks I’m avoiding him, or there’s someone else…” She digs her nails into Max so hard Capable sees the skin goes white and moves to set a hand on her wrist.

“He’s not coming back, Angharad,” she promises with the lie heavy on her tongue.

“Yes, he will,” Angharad says reflexively, so harsh, so convinced that Capable’s blood runs cold.

She looks at Max. “Can we file some kind of protection order? Something to force him to stay away?”

Max shakes his head. “Town’s too small. Nearest station’s almost an hour away. Wouldn’t be good enough.”

Angharad’s phone finally stops ringing. A new voicemail pops up.

Max pokes the phone and watches it spin in a circle. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have a gun?”

Angharad flinches. “No. But he does.”

Max glances at Capable. “Do you?”

She shakes her head.

“Nux?”

She frowns. “Don’t know.”

Max nods, then carefully reaches across the countertop to touch Angharad’s fingertips. “Does he know Furiosa and Valkyrie?”

Her mouth twists. “Yeah.”

Max glances between the two of them. “Can I convince you to close early?”

***

Tripp snorts when Max’s car rolls up the driveway. It’s the first time Valkyrie has seen it up close: it’s an old Ford Falcon, escaped from the 1970’s, black under the dust. Angharad’s car is behind it, but she’s sitting in the passenger seat and Capable is driving. Valkyrie has seen healthier corpses.

She wheels Tripp around and canters up to the barn entrance, yelling for Furiosa.

***

They get Angharad settled into the spare room upstairs after she comes alive enough to put her foot down and refuses to take Valkyrie’s room just to save herself the stairs. Then Capable makes herself a pot of coffee, Valkyrie and Angharad go for a walk to see the horses and visit with Toast and Cheedo, Max sits on the kitchen floor to play with Pi, and Furiosa flops next to him and calls Nada.

“Abusive husband. Been gone for three months, threatening to come back. Can’t get a restraining order that would work. Need a babysitter for the heavily-pregnant wife. She’s a friend.”

“Much as I’d like to, I can’t just ask for unlimited vacation time on short notice,” Nada says. “But Amí can.”

The phone changes hands. Rei lays down with his head on Furiosa’s thigh and watches her.

“Did I lose spare room privileges?”

“You’ll probably be sleeping on a couch,” Furiosa admits.

“Do I get to shoot the husband if he turns up?”

“You get free diner food and the right to menace him by whatever means necessary that are within the limits of the laws of South Australia.” She watches Max smile.

“Can I beat him unconscious with a frying pan?”

“If he tries to assault someone, yes. But he’s over two meters, and he’s got to be a hundred-fifty kilos.”

Amí makes a dismissive noise. “I’ll be there in thirty hours. Try not to shoot anyone before then.”

***

Valkyrie takes Angharad’s phone, puts it on silent, and waits until Rictus hasn’t called for three hours before she gives it back. Max leaves for part of that time to drive four towns over and get them Chinese takeout for dinner, just so he has something to do. When he gets back, Toast and Cheedo are in the house and everyone has relocated to the sitting area to watch Mythbusters.

He’s barely put the food down when Cheedo says “I should probably go home; I promised I’d be back for dinner.”

Max watches Furiosa’s gaze flick to meet his before he offers to drive her.

Her house isn’t far from the intersection that passes for a main street, where the highway meets the road leading to their tourist-trap hotel, two of the churches, and the diner. Max clears his throat when they pull up in front of it.

“Thanks for the ride,” Cheedo says.

“Hey.”

She stops with her hand on the door handle. She’s wearing short sleeves again. No visible bruises.

“Anything ever happens with your parents… you have people. We’ll protect you.”

Cheedo smiles. “My parents are fine. Just strict.” Then she climbs out of the car.

Max waits for her to open the front door before he drives back to the barn.

Capable’s gone.

“Nux picked her up,” Toast says. “And I’m spending the night here.” She’s lounging on the couch with her feet in Valkyrie’s lap.

Furiosa is sitting on the floor, surrounded by dogs, but she climbs to her feet when Max hesitates in the doorway. She’s still in full riding gear. She touches Max’s shoulder as she steps past him, so he follows her outside. She hops onto the fence of the mud pen and waits for Max to clamber up next to her before she speaks:

“I’m going to the diner with Angharad in the morning, in case anything happens. Then… we’ll have an old friend here. They can handle just about anything.” She shoves her hand through her hair. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this mess. Rictus is a lot more dangerous than Cheedo’s parents.”

Max shrugs. “You have my number.”

Furiosa stares him down. “It was my job to kill people. And Valkyrie’s. And all the people we’re going to call in if we need to. You’re going to regret sticking around.”

Max points at the top of the house to indicate Angharad. “If she gets hurt, I’ll regret that more.”

Furiosa scowls. “She’s not your wife, Max, and that’s not your son.” She watches him straighten up. “And I will not apologize for saying that. Angharad’s hell is completely separate from yours.”

Max tears his gaze away from Furiosa’s to glare at the ground. His hands twitch around each other. He can feel her watching him.

“Slug me if it makes you feel better, but I’ll hit back.”

“No,” he mutters. “That’s not it.”

“Then _what_?”

Max wraps his arms around himself. “Did Angharad change her name when she got married?”

“Yeah. To Moore. Why?”

He shrugs. “She should be careful about changing it again. May be easier to hide in plain sight.”

Furiosa climbs off the fence and stands in front of him. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” He glances at her, then jumps down.

Her prosthetic clamps onto his shoulder. “You not telling me something?”

Max bites the inside of his cheek, then nods twice fast.

Furiosa’s whole face changes. In the span of three seconds, she goes from aggressively irritated to brutally tired. “Will you tell me if it becomes important?”

“Sure.” He touches her chin with two knuckles. “I’m sorry.”

She rolls her whole head with her eyes. “Yeah, ‘sorry’ fixes everything.”

Max tries to smile and doesn’t get very far. “Hey.” He slides his palm up to cup her face.

“Hey yourself,” Furiosa mutters, but she doesn’t strangle him.

Max leans in.

There’s no hand in his hair or at his throat, no wall to be pinned against. There’s just a sky that’s open all around them. Sunset is dying in the west, the horses are cropping grass, their friends are watching television, the dogs are probably asleep, and Max is kissing Furiosa JoBassa. It’s soft and stuttering; they’re too tired to push for more. Her hand doesn’t do more than fist loosely in his shirt as their bodies find a way to tuck together. But it’s nice, out there in the rising dark.

Furiosa rests her forehead against his when the energy drains out of them. “Fool,” she mumbles.

Max kisses her cheek. “Yeah.”

She wraps her arm around his waist for the walk back to the house. At the door, she runs her fingers over his chin. “As long as you’re taking opinions, the beard isn’t terrible.”

“Oh,” he says. “Okay.”

This time, Furiosa pulls him in for a fast one by the collar of his shirt. His hand smacks against the door, trying to find balance, and then she pushes him back again. “Tomorrow.”

“You still have my dog in there.”

“Ah.” Her face goes blank. “Right.”

Max snorts.

He doesn’t want to deal with Toast’s smirk, so he lets Furiosa slip inside to grab Pi while he leans against the side of the house and stares up at the emerging stars.

“You are cute when you’re concentrating,” she says, poking her head back out.

“Mmm.”

Pi drops into his arms. Furiosa squeezes his shoulder. “Tomorrow,” she repeats.

For that, Max kind of has to kiss her again.


	6. A Few Things To Burn

The guest room has a door that locks and Valkyrie gives Angharad the key. She has her own bathroom, and the toilet is right outside her door. The first time she goes to pee in the middle of the night, she almost steps on Jackson because he’s asleep in front of her door, sitting guard, like Cerberus minus a few heads.

Furiosa’s door is open a crack. Rei pokes his head out, sniffs long enough to recognize Angharad, then vanishes back inside.

She’s been getting up before dawn for so long that the darkness is akin to a blanket: it’s her and Jackson down in the kitchen with the lights off, putting water on for tea, until Furiosa makes her way downstairs.

“Hi,” Angharad whispers.

Furiosa gives a small wave as she flicks on the light over the stove. “You hungry?”

“Not really.”

Jackson butts his skull against Furiosa knees; she crouches to rub his ears and frowns over him at Angharad. “Oatmeal? Cereal? Avocado sandwich?”

Angharad shakes her head.

“I will list every food item in this house until you pick something.”

“Fine, oatmeal.” The kettle is boiling, so Angharad pulls it off the burner. “Do you have honey? And chamomile tea?”

Furiosa nods and starts pulling items out of the cabinets. She doesn’t force Angharad to down an entire bowl of oatmeal, but does wrap up an orange before they drive to the diner. Once they arrive, she sits at the counter with a newspaper, glares away the six different people who try to take the stool next to hers, peels the orange, then shoves it across the counter at Angharad when there’s a lull in the stream of orders. After the first hour, she puts herself in charge of coffee dispensation. The mostly-polite early-morning crowd of stock(wo)men and jack/jillaroos suddenly become a lot friendlier when Angharad is the one who stops at their tables.

***

Toast wakes up with Paddy lying on her chest, front paws on either side of her neck, licking her face.

“Mmph,” she says. “No I don- _mmmmgn!_ ”

Valkyrie makes a grumbling noise and rolls over. “Paddy.” She snaps her fingers. When she’s ignored, she reaches out and grabs Paddy around the ribcage to physically pull her off of Toast. “I told you not to lie on your back.”

“Yeah, I’ll be sure to remember that the next time I roll around in my sleep in the middle of the night.” Toast grabs the sheet and pulls it up to wipe the most obvious tracks of dog-slobber off her face. Paddy is now on the bed between the humans, looking thoroughly pleased with herself. “Thought she was supposed to be well-trained or something.”

Valkyrie reaches over Paddy to pat her hair, mock-comforting. “I think you’ll survive.”

Toast swats her away. “It’s cute when puppies do it. Not adults. Like dropping food on yourself.”

“Uh-huh.” Valkyrie doesn’t sound impressed. She spends a few seconds rubbing Paddy’s belly, then tosses a pillow at Toast.

Toast yelps. “The bloody hell was that for?” She grabs for the pillow and starts to heft it.

“Just waking you up.” Valkyrie catches the returned pillow with too much ease to be fair. “C’mon, Toastie; Furiosa’s gone with Angharad and it’s time for feeds.”

Toast throws another pillow at her just for good measure, then curls into a ball while Valkyrie climbs out of bed. “Make me coffee. Then we’ll talk.”

Valkyrie raises her eyebrows, pulls her door open, and whistles.

Jackson barrels down the stairs and around the corner, and Toast covers her head as fifty kilos of Rotttweiler thunder onto the bed and collapse on top of her. He makes a cheerful rumbling noise when Toast tries to shove him off.

“Thanks, Satan.”

“You’re welcome.” Valkyrie breezes out her door. “I’m only making enough coffee for me.”

“Like _hell_ you are. Jackson, down. No, not like that – _off_. Off, Jackson. Get off me. _Good boy._ ” Then she sprints into the kitchen and almost dies trying to tackle Valkyrie.

***

Nux almost doesn’t realize that Max has walked into the diner because between the crossword, Furiosa’s metal arm that he has never seen up close before, and the fact that Furiosa is determined to find the next crossword answer before him and has an advantage because she doesn’t have to pay attention to customers more than once every ten minutes, Nux is Kind Of Distracted. And then he sees The Puppy.

Nux knows the story of The Puppy. Nux knows the color and shape and size and weight and their best guess for the age of The Puppy because Capable wants to abduct The Puppy, or at least record every moment of Her Existence.

Nux is delighted that The Puppy lives up to the hype. He gets to hold her and let her chew on his fingers while Furiosa and Max and Angharad have a Very Quiet And Serious Conversation on the other side of the counter. Then he gets beckoned around the counter and into Angharad’s Office and Max asks him a lot of questions about Rictus Moore, who is, by Nux’s recollection, Unnaturally Tall, Unnaturally Strong, Very Possessive, and could probably use a good massage and one of those soul-cleanse things at some sort of nice, peaceful resort that is very far away from Citadel and has lots of people whose job it is to keep Rictus inside.

Nux has his job because of Rictus.

Nux is twenty. Angharad is probably around thirty. Rictus is at least a couple years older than her, which means he is in the same age group as Nux’s youngest uncles and some of his older cousins, and people who like cars and shooting animals and Shooting Animals From Cars more than Taking Care Of Animals tend to hang together out here. And Rictus didn’t want Any Random Boy working around The Splendid Angharad at the same time Nux needed a Job, and so here they are.

He tells Max this, and Max kind of frowns about it, but that’s all. He asks Nux what he’s seen.

Nux has seen Rictus get angry a lot. But not at Angharad. Not right in front of Other People. There used to be regular yelling in The Office That Is Angharad’s And Always Has Been Because It’s Her Diner And She Bought It, Not Rictus. There was one time Rictus hit Angharad in front of Other People, and then she threw a plate at him and told him to Eat Fucking Shit And Get Out Forever, and that was the last time Nux saw Rictus Moore and he is Fine With That.

Max writes this down. He asks Nux for everything that Nux can remember his uncles or his cousins or Anyone Else Ever saying about Rictus and who he is and what he does and where he goes and what his family Is Known For, and most of what Nux knows is a couple scraps about The War Boys, who are somehow tied to Rictus’ father, because Nux’s Favorite Cousin Josh joined them and started calling himself Slit, which is the kind of thing that people do when they need a soul-cleanse and several hot cups of tea, and then Max decides to stop asking questions.

Capable is there when they go back to the front of the diner, which means she sees Nux holding The Puppy, which means she smiles, which means Nux feels a tiny bit less worried about Everything, which is probably good, because there is a lot of Everything going on in Citadel right now.

***

The Ford F-450 that turns up the driveway at sunset on Tuesday has jacked-up wheels, a dirt bike strapped into the bed, and looks like it may have been driven straight across the salt flats and over the mountain range that separates Citadel from Canberra. Toast can’t tell what color it’s supposed to be even with the floodlights glaring down on it.

The person who climbs out of the cab is only two or three centimeters taller than Toast, which means their head barely clears Valkyrie’s shoulder when she strides out to meet them. There’s something with clasping each other’s shoulders and touching foreheads, and then the driver yanks a bag and a long black plastic case out of the cab and they’re trodding up to the hourse.

Cheedo’s already gone home for the night; Angharad and Furiosa are in the barn office, dealing with their respective piles of paperwork, so Toast goes to let them know. (Angharad is infinitely neater than Furiosa _and_ Valkyrie combined. Toast hopes they take notes.) Then she lingers in the front hall of the barn, waiting.

The driver has put on sunglasses that have chunky black frames since getting out of the car, irrespective of the fading light. Toast isn’t quite sure what to do with that, but she smiles and waves hello anyway.

Valkyire looks between them and makes an amused noise in her throat. “Amí, Toast. Toast, Amí.”

“Pleasure.” Toast sticks out her hand.

Amí’s eyebrows hitch. Toast wonders if they’re related to Valkyrie. They’ve got a similar skin tone, but lighter-colored hair that they’ve cut almost as short as Furiosa’s. Their hand is callus-rough, but she can’t tell from what, and figures it may be better not to know. Then they’re past her, into the office. Amí and Furiosa do the same forehead-touching thing they did with Valkyrie, before they turn towards Angharad.

“Can’t imagine who you could be.”

Toast leans against the doorframe. There’s some kind of inflection in their voice, and she’s not sure if the enforced gender-neutrality surrounding this person is intentional.

Angharad manages a smile. “Sorry to drag you across the continent.”

Amí shrugs, then points at Furiosa. “I’ve been retired as long as she has, and I didn’t get to drive road trains every which way through the Outback afterwards. Was a good change of scenery.”

“So what do you do?” Toast asks.

Amí glances over their shoulder at her. “Practical effects.”

“Like, for movies?”

They nod. “Lots of designing shit to blow up. Pay is okay.” There’s a lightning-strike grin. “The military did promise to give me a marketable skill set.”

Valkyrie snorts.

“So…” Angharad folds her hands over her belly. “What’s with the sunglasses?”

The grin fades to a bitter twist of their mouth. “Please don’t chunder on me.”

Toast frowns.

The sunglasses come off. And it’s fine, there’s a sharp-cut black eye that has age sinking wrinkles into the skin around it, and…

“Oh.”

The eyebrow over the gnarled red knot of flesh where Amí’s left eye should be rises in unison with its twin. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” They tuck the sunglasses into a case and stuff that into the pocket of their cargo pants. “Not the kind of thing that’s good for business outside a freak show.”

Toast sits on the arm of the couch and tries not to stare. She says the first thing that comes to mind and doesn’t sound offensive: “Can you still shoot?”

The smile makes a return. “Why do you think I was called?”

“Shooting’s not going to fix anything-” Angharad starts.

Amí waves a hand to cut her off. “As soon as most people _think_ you’re going to shoot them, they bail. Or at least stop moving forward. That’s all I’m here to do; any murders I commit are no longer sanctioned or protected by the Australian government’s blah-de-blah-de-bullshit. Warning shots only. Can you live with that?”

Angharad doesn’t look like that’s the kind of answer she wanted, but she nods anyway.

***

Furiosa manages to beg off showing Amí the broken dirt bikes until morning. The adult dogs are fascinated by both their new housemates to the point where Pi keeps getting bowled over and almost stepped on as they race from one end of the house to the other, so Furiosa takes her outside around when Max would be closing up the diner. She lowers the tailgate on her truck and lifts Pi into the bed so she can sniff around and snap at the loose scraps of chaff that skitter in the breeze. Furiosa sits on the tailgate, watching the house.

They’ve turned off the floodlights. The stars are out is fat blue clusters, the Milky Way spilling across the sky.

She can feel Max coming in the dark.

His headlights slice up the road before he kills the engine; then it’s them in the black and gray, with a dog and the crescent moon the only ones to watch.

“Hey,” Furiosa says as Max crunches up the drive.

His head turns to register the new truck. “Your friend showed up.”

“Yeah. Sixteen-hour drive. But they did it.”

Max makes a small noise of acknowledgment as he comes to stand next to her, sets his hands on the tailgate, shoulders loose when Pi bolts down to greet him.

She nudges her knee against his hip. “Everything alright at the diner?”

“Yeah. ‘S fine.”

She lets him sit with his silence.

Pi is already getting bigger, legs longer, paws outpacing the rest of her. She’ll be a good-looking dog when she’s grown. Right now all she wants to do is have Max rub her ears while she slumps on the tailgate and yawns.

Furiosa pulls her knees up so she can sit cross-legged and stare upwards, spine straight, hand curled in her lap. A lonely plane winks from the sea above.

Max clears his throat. “House too crowded?”

“A little, yeah.” She catches Max glancing away when she lowers her gaze.

Pi is in the process of going to sleep, but Max keeps his eyes fixed on her anyway, chin tucked into his chest, hands soft. His “Care for a drink?” is so quiet Furiosa almost misses it.

“Now?”

Max’s eyes flick to her. He grunts, shrugs. “Whenever.”

She smiles. “Now works.”

His hands go still. “Okay.”

Furiosa slides down, watches Max pick up Pi, then closes the tailgate and follows him down to his car. There, she takes Pi and climbs into the passenger seat.

“Nice car,” she says, shooting him a grin. “You steal it?”

Max shoots her a mock-offended look and relaxes a little. He pulls the car onto the road and guns the engine, for all that it’s only a kilometer between houses, so that the night spills through the windows and tangles in their hair.

Furiosa had been in the house a handful of times when the Keeper was still alive. Most things are the same; a few parts have been shuffled or altered. The biggest difference is the lack of old-lady-surrounded-by-animals smell. She walks to the back porch while Max busies himself in the kitchen and Pi collapses under a chair. “I can’t believe Dag hasn’t forced you to do something with the garden yet. Or Toast.”

Max grunts. “Toast has a key.”

“Better watch out, then.”

Max raises his eyebrows and pads out of the kitchen with two stubbies. He holds one out to her, then follows her onto the porch. They sit on the steps together, knees barely brushing. The night is warm, the beer is cold, and Furiosa’s heart is tight in her chest, beating through the thin fabric of her tank top.

“How’s the knee?”

“Getting better.” Max shrugs. “Shoulder?”

Furiosa smiles. “Been fine for a while.” She sets down her beer so she can poke his brace. “You ever had an actual doctor look at it?”

Max hesitates. “Yes.”

“When?”

He sips his beer and doesn’t look at her. “A while ago.”

Furiosa rolls her eyes and picks up her stubbie again. “Fool.”

“Mmhm.”

***

It’s technically Wednesday when they go inside again. Pi has fallen asleep under her chair, so Max ducks into his bedroom and emerges with a puppy-sized bed that he sets next to her. Furiosa leans against the couch.

“You’re pretty cute,” she says, just to watch Max go pink.

He mutters something unintelligible.

“Words are nice.”

He turns his face to meet her eyes. “You’re mad, woman.”

She shrugs. “Pretty sure I was asked over here, not the other way ‘round.”

“Yeah, well…” Max trails off as he rises to his feet. “Guess that does make me a fool.”

Furiosa grins. She knots her hand in Max’s shirt when he steps towards her, and then she tugs him in and lets him kiss her, lets him hold her, hands curved over her hips, pulled tight together. She thumbs at his jaw and the beard growing there until he makes a strangled noise. “Easy, there,” she murmurs.

Max bends his face into her neck so she can feel his smile, then clips his teeth against the side of her throat.

She claws up to his hair and closes her eyes, breathes deep against a shudder. “Leave a hickey and I’ll trample you.”

Max rumbles out of his chest. He doesn’t bite hard enough to leave a bruise, but does a slow track around her neck of scraping stubble and soft presses, hands flexing over her clothes, until she’s yanking on his shirt in frustration. “Impatient,” he mutters into her skin.

“Says the man who hit a hundred driving a kilometer home.”

Max makes a frustrated little grunt and kisses her again, before she spins away and retraces his steps to his bedroom.

It’s the one space she hasn’t seen before, which makes it really feel like Max’s, not Keeper’s: there’s a laptop and a laundry basket and a cactus on the sill of the open window and the same kind of simple, cheap sheets and blankets that Furiosa buys, and then Max drags his teeth over the back of her neck and she decides that there are better things to think about and turns around.

She gets his shirt tugged off within a couple seconds and doesn’t bother pretending not to be appreciative, especially because it makes Max go pink again and Furiosa really, really likes that. She’s a little amused at how gentle he is about nudging her backwards onto the bed, hands hovering over her sides in case she loses her balance, like there isn’t already something practically designed to catch her. But then he bends to kiss her and doesn’t follow her onto the mattress. Instead, his fingers flicker around the waistband of her shorts.

She lets her teeth catch on his bottom lip. “If you’re waiting for permission, you have it.”

Max sighs. He brushes his mouth down her throat as she lifts her hips, and he pulls her shorts off in one smooth movement. Then he’s kneeling between her thighs, and Furiosa leans back, staring at the ceiling while her heart jumps a two-meter course.

Maybe it’s been ten years since Max went down on someone, or maybe it hasn’t, but he takes the time to kiss his way up her thighs and leaves a trail of stubble burn behind that hits so many nerves she almost grabs his hair and hauls him up to where she wants him. Then she feels his fingers reach up to spread her, and hooks her knees over his shoulders while she drags in a staggering breath that gets cut off with the first lick. Her hand finds Max’s hair, and she shudders.

He takes his goddamn time about it, slow and steady, free hand hooked up under her thigh, thumbing over the span of her ribs, easy strokes to match his tongue, and then he slips the first finger inside her and she clenches so hard he laughs against her, caught between her legs, and she’s shivering and shaking as he knocks her over the edge, her hand a fist in his hair.

He doesn’t give her a second to catch her breath before there’s another finger inside and a gentle, humming pressure against her clit and Furiosa twitches like her nerves are on fire. She digs her heels into Max’s back, and he gives her the second one fast, crooking his fingers inside her and dragging down, wet heat and pressure flicking over the same bundle of nerves until she gasps it out, phantom fingers at the end of her stump trying to clutch at the sheets while her real ones yank at his hair.

There is wet clinging to Max’s proto-beard when he pulls his head back to give her a small, crooked smile.

“Shit, Max. Get up here.”

He obliges, unbuckling his brace while Furiosa yanks off her sweat-sticky shirt and the sports bra that has been feeling like a chain around her chest all night, and then he’s next to her and they’re working off his jeans and she has him in her hand, his face pressed into her neck, quivering while she bites at the thick muscles of his shoulder and rasps fast strokes between their bodies until Max’s hips start working in little spastic jerks to follow her rhythm. Then it’s his turn to tremble.

After, he looks at the mess they’ve made of each other and presses a scratchy kiss against her cheek. “Shower?”

“Mmm.”

There’s barely enough room for both of them in the shower, which means she gets a lot of excuses to kiss him and even more to stare. She has more scars. He has more tattoos. There are some gothic letters down by the cut of his hip, what looks like a birthdate and a name on the back of his left shoulder, and a seven-digit number with a line through it under his right collarbone. Furiosa doesn’t ask.

She glances at the clock as they’re toweling dry. “While I have no problem with spending the night, I do need to get up early.”

“Okay,” Max says.

“Early as in six. As in sunrise.”

Max shrugs. “The dog’ll wake up first.”

She smiles. “Your pain, not mine.”

Max nods, but he makes a tiny, helpless noise a few minutes later when he walks out of the bathroom and finds her still completely naked in his bed.

She pats the pillow next to her. “You’re wasting beauty sleep time.”

Max clicks off the light without taking his eyes off her.

Furiosa tracks him through the room by sound, then by touch when he climbs onto the bed and up the length of her body until he’s hovering over her, a warm space in the dark. “Hey,” she murmurs, and lifts her hand to cup his face.

Max’s palm skates a hairs-breadth over her belly. “Night-cap?”

“Max Rockatansky, I do declare –” his hand settles between her spread legs, and Furiosa loses her train of thought.

“Hmmm?” He mouths at her neck, fingers already circling the same spot his tongue was working before. He stops when Furiosa mutters a curse. “You were saying?”

“ _Max_.”

Three hard flicks that make her hips buck, then nothing. “Yes?”

“You’re a bloody fucking fool.”

He gets her to come so hard she almost draws blood clawing at his shoulders while he sucks a bruise under her collarbone and lets her ride three of his fingers, his arm curled around her hips, her leg hooked over his waist, gripping tight. She almost screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Sunday?


	7. First Over the Falls

Furiosa is barely asleep when she hears her phone start buzzing, down off the end of the bed, and the opening notes of the Jaws theme float up to them.

“That’s Valkyrie,” Furiosa mutters. Max grumbles and pulls his face out of her shoulder so she can climb over him to fish the phone from the pocket of her shorts. She lies on her stomach, against the line of Max’s legs, phone pressed to her ear. “I’m not dead.”

“Oh, really? Thanks for telling me before vanishing when there is a disturbingly large standover man likely on his way back to town.” Valkyrie does one of those long exhales that Furiosa recognizes: equal parts rage and fear, trying to simmer down from an adrenaline rush. “You with your cop?”

“I’ll be back to do morning feeds.”

“Okay.” She sounds calmer. “Come find me once you’re home.” She hangs up.

Max grunts with a question mark.

“Valkyrie’s worried. I’d bet Rictus tried to call Angharad again.” Furiosa rubs at her eyes and lets her phone drop. The bedroom door is closed; when she sits still she can hear a faint snuffling and whimpering coming from the other side. There’s a very soft thud followed by hesitant scratching. She has to get off the bed to open the door.

Pi dashes through the opening, then slams on the brakes at the foot of the bed. Her legs aren’t quite long enough to make the jump up to the top, so Furiosa lifts her, then slides in next to Max once more while Pi investigates the new state of affairs.

Furiosa lies on her side, facing Max, and waits for him to shuffle closer before she folds her arm over his ribcage and slips a leg between his. He hums and kisses her collarbone, head notched under her chin, palm wide and warm where it’s settled on her spine, and goes back to sleep.

Pi lays claim to an unoccupied corner of the bed and turns four tight circles before she lies down.

***

She definitely wasn’t lying about the sunrise piece. Max wakes up with Pi sprawled across his ankles and the noises of coffee preparation filtering from the kitchen.

Furiosa is wearing the same clothes as last night and has already found the dog food. Pi catapults past Max at the first rattle of kibble in the bowl. Furiosa makes her sit before she sets the bowl on the floor. “Dag tell you she’ll need more vaccinations around ten weeks?”

He grunts. “There was a pamphlet.”

“They tell you not to take them out in public until two weeks after the second round. As a precaution.” She unfolds from her crouch to look him over. “Sleep alright?”

Max raises his eyebrows.

Furiosa grins and gives him a little shrug. “Just checking.”

Max folds his arms over his chest.

“Careful,” Furiosa says. She appears to pick a cabinet at random to open, then makes a noise of pleasant surprise. “You do have oatmeal. Good man.” Then she glances at him. “You can go back to bed if you want.”

Max shakes his head as he pads over to her. The cups are in the cabinet next to the one she has open; she leans past him to grab one as soon as she sees them. Then she sets her stump on his shoulder-blade and slides around to his other side. That cabinet doesn’t have bowls, but the next one she tries does.

She cobbles together her oatmeal and completes it with a fistful of berries out of his fridge, tosses it in the microwave, and slips up behind Max. She lays her hand over his waist and kisses the back of his neck. “Coffee done?”

He runs his thumb over her knuckles. “Yeah.” He turns his head, and Furiosa kisses him, in his kitchen, with the dawn leaking in.

***

Capable has morning breakfast duty, so she’s already halfway through her first pot of coffee and has three different kinds of batter ready and waiting by the time Angharad unlocks the front door. She dusts flour off her palms and breezes up to the front. “Hi!” There are three eyes looking at her when there should be four. Rictus ought to shit himself. “I’m Capable. Can I get you anything?”

The stranger’s head cocks a few degrees to the left. “That a name or description?”

Capable smiles. “Both, usually.”

“This is Amí,” Angharad says. “Valkyrie and Furiosa’s friend -” she shoots a glare at them “- who made a promise.”

“Deal, not promise.” Amí drops onto a stool, unzips their leather jacket, pulls out a sawn-off shotgun and a golden revolver, and slides them across the counter to Angharad. “You got the stuff for pikelets back there?” they ask as the guns disappear under the register.

“Yeah,” Capable says. “Do you and Valkyrie hide your knives in the same places?”

Amí crosses their arms when Angharad looks up. “I spent ten years in a top-secret branch of the military, killing people who could have been distant cousins so your pretentious arses could feel safe at night.”

“Give me the knives,” Angharad says.

“Thrilling as it would be, I’m too old to be killing giants with my bare hands.”

“The knives or you’ll be having a dingo’s breakfast.”

She gets two short, mean-looking pieces of metal off Amí before the first wave of stockmen sweeps through the door. Angharad has to duck to stash the weapons, and Amí whips out a set of sunglasses that hide their eye. “Pikelets,” they repeat to no one in particular. There is a hint of a black plastic handle protruding from their boot.

Capable backs into her kitchen. “Coming right up.”

***

Max insists on giving her a ride home, and she goes along with it for another excuse to ride in that grumbling, charging car that could very well be an extension of Max’s personality. She kisses him before she climbs out, leaning over the gearshift, hand splayed on his chest, and he gives a quiet, tiny rumble as she slides out. He watches her slip through the gate, then turns the Falcon in a tight circle and drives home to his dog.

They prep morning grain buckets the night before, so Furiosa heads for the barn and walks into the front hall just in time to watch Valkyrie drop a twenty-kilo hay bale out of the loft that’s built over the feed and tack rooms and the rear storage area. The bale lands next to a wheelbarrow in the middle of the front hall and spits a small cloud of chaff into the air. Valkyrie swings herself onto the ladder built into the wall and climbs down after it.

Furiosa ducks into the feed room to grab her mucking/haying prosthetic. She’s buckling it on when Valkyrie walks in to collect the first set of grain buckets.

“We should go for a ride today,” Valkyrie says. “Toast said she’d cover your nine o’clock.”

“Okay.” Furiosa walks back to the main hall to heave the hay bale into the wheelbarrow and slices the twine bindings off. “Was there a call last night?”

Valkyrie has three buckets on each arm when she emerges. “She came downstairs after the second one and I pulled the battery out of her phone. Hadn’t put it back in when they left.”

“How many guns?”

“Two. And at least four knives.”

“They take my shotgun?”

“Brought their own sawn-off.”

“Angharad alright?”

“Not happy about the weapons. Was going to make Amí stash them once they got to the diner. Bleeding-heart pacifist.” Valkyrie drops four of the buckets to hop the fence into Bones and Tripp’s paddock.

Furiosa heaves twin loads of hay over the fence. “We can’t change her.”

“Well it makes her a screaming nightmare to protect.” Valkyrie hitches the buckets to the fence over each pile of hay. “And we can’t take Cheedo if something happens now.”

Furiosa nods as they head to the next paddock: Pearl and Pee-Wee.

“You think Dag would do it?”

“Foster Cheedo?” Another load of hay.

“Yeah.” Valkyrie glances at her. “I know we’ve talked about this. Nobody knows Cheedo better, or what shitty parents are like.”

Furiosa frowns. “Would a court let her take Cheedo? She drives all over the state for work.”

“Cheedo’s almost sixteen; she doesn’t need constant management.” Valkyrie perches on the fence and hefts the last two buckets so her torso is the fulcrum of a scale “Abusive parents… busy vet who still comes home every night and isn’t a shit-stain. Abusive parents, busy vet. Abuse… huh.” She skews to one side. “The vet seems to be winning.”

Furiosa pokes her with the pitchfork. “That’s your opinion, not a court’s.”

“Yeah, well.” Valkyrie kicks the pitchfork away, then goes to get the rest of the buckets. “The court should goddamn listen,” she yells over her shoulder.

Furiosa slips into the back paddock to unlock the stalls and set the four geldings free before she tosses them their hay.

***

There’s a gate at the far end of the back paddock that opens onto kilometers of scrub and red dirt on all sides. East are dry salt lakes for almost two hundred clicks before you hit the dingo fence and the green costal region. To the west are more salt flats, then the Flinders Mountains, then hundreds more kilometers of salt before the eastern coast. The north is dead and dry on both sides of the dingo fence: there’s a military test range nearby, and then enough hard, baked, unpopulated Outback to hide all the conspiracy theories you could ever dream of.

Tripp and Gen don’t like most other horses and _really_ don’t like each other, so they saddle up Roman and Harley to ride out the back gate. It’s too hot, too dry, too open to stay out for long, but if they can’t get lost. They can always go east until they hit the highway and then follow it back to Citadel, or ride straight south until the land becomes familiar once more.

Furiosa likes it out there. It reminds her of days alone with her road trains, staring at an empty sky, not needing to think about anything beyond the final drop. That was why she liked the military, too: less thinking about after, more doing in the moment. In-between were the hell years. After, they had the barn. Horses, if nothing else, demand structure.

They’re ten minutes out from the barn before Valkyrie opens her mouth. “You know how Nux told pitbull cop that there might be a connection between the War Boys and the fuckstick’s dad?”

“Yeah?”

“You notice how pitbull cop ended the discussion after that tidbit?”

“Did you call Nada again?”

Valkyrie lets Roman stretch his neck out and sits deeper in her saddle as they amble down a hill. “Do you already know what I’m going to say? Did he tell you?”

Furiosa doesn’t say anything.

Valkyrie sighs. “Cheedo’s dad was a War Boy into his mid-twenties; they called him the Ace. His only conviction was demanding property with the intent to steal, which means he spent less than thirty months in jail, and, since he was relatively well-behaved for the next ten years, it’s considered a spent conviction.” She glances at Furiosa. “This isn’t the interesting part.”

“So what is?”

Valkyrie clears her throat. “Fuckstick’s dad is a former colonel from the army. Joseph Moore. Immortan Joe to the War Boys.” She halts Roman, so Furiosa does the same with Harley. They sit in silence for a moment.

“Val?”

A long inhale. “Father Fuckstick started the War Boys. He is, for all intents and purposes, their leader. They conduct most of their operations around here, in New South Wales, and in the Capital Territory.” She strokes Roman’s neck when he tosses his head. “You get one guess at who Max Rockatansky was pointing the finger at when they suspended him from the Fed Police after that car accident.”

Furiosa takes a second to process that. “Max thinks War Boys killed his wife and son?”

“And then arrived in the last known location of their leader’s son _completely_ by coincidence, I’m sure.” The wind is whipping Valkyrie’s hair around her face. “This is a mess, Fury. I hate it.”

Her guts twist up. “I hate it, too.”

“Be careful.”

“I know.”

The ground is too pitted and rough and unfamiliar to run the horses out here, so they have to walk back to the barn. Harley dances under Furiosa the whole time.

***

Furiosa isn’t anywhere around the barn, and neither is Valkyrie, and there’s a tiny person wearing a big leather coat and sunglasses trying to argue with Angharad about something when he gets to the diner. Then they get quiet.

Angharad is visibly frustrated. “Max, this is Amí.”

Amí perks up and then whips off their sunglasses. “Pitbull cop?” One eye gone. Could be Valkyrie’s cousin. Or not. Wrong bone structure.

“Word gets around,” Max mutters.

Amí snorts. “You could say that.”

“Max,” Angharad says. “Are there any cars in the lot?”

He checks through the window, then shakes his head. When he turns around, there are two guns on the countertop.

“Are either of these legal?”

Max walks over to the counter and taps to knuckles on the sawn-off. “No.” Two on the revolver, which looks like a .44 Magnum Ruger with some kind of golden plating. “Only with a permit for target shooting.” He looks at Amí’s grin. “Got one?”

“No comment.” The sawn-off gets fitted into a harness on their chest, the revolver underneath it. They hold out their hands. “Stabbies, please.”

Angharad pulls out a small, definitively illegal push knife, and an equally-illegal trench knife, both in sheaths that buckle under the cover of the leather jacket, which looks an awful lot like a smaller version of the one Valkyrie wears, minus some crow feathers.

“Gracias.”

Max clears his throat. “Both illegal.”

“It’s okay, broken record.” Amí pats his shoulder. “No one’s going to tell.”

Max looks at Angharad, who gives him a heavy sigh and a small smile. “I haven’t seen Capable or Nux in half an hour. Go make sure they’re not rooting on a stove while we finish up here, will you? Please?”

***

Amí finally talks their way into the garage in the early afternoon and pulls out the dirt bikes, which are both covered with dust and cobwebs, onto the stretch of ground alongside the driveway that is shielded from the afternoon sun by the bulk of the garage and house proper. Toast brings out a small pile of paperwork and uses wrenches as paperweights while she asks questions about engine components and wiring. Angharad brings a book and a towel to sit on.

Furiosa and Valkyrie both have lessons to teach through the afternoon and evening, but they keep wandering over to watch Amí work and shake their heads with bemused smiles. The dogs don’t much like the smells of grease and oil, but Pi knows Toast will cuddle her if she flops nearby and looks adorable, and Nahi and Jackson follow her like formal escorts that sneeze every time they go to sniff the bikes.

“So,” Amí says when no one has asked them a question for a while. “You two from around here?”

Angharad says “Yes” very quietly.

Toast shakes her head. “Born in Los Angeles, grew up in Hawaii, went to school in Perth.” She pauses. “Met Valkyrie while I was there. Got a job offer after I graduated. Here I am.”

“You met her while doing something illegal, didn’t you?”

Toast smiles. “Not quite. She spent a year as a trainer at the barn where I was riding, and then we ran into each other at an environmental rally. Guess something clicked.”

Amí squints at her. “You can’t be thirty yet.”

“Twenty-six.”

Amí rolls their single eye and mutters “The militant lesbian corrupter of young minds strikes again.”

Angharad laughs.

Toast lets Pi climb into her lap. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jackson noses at her cheek.

“Means Valkyrie can talk Fury into anything – can actually talk most people into anything. She’s tall and strong and beautiful and is driven by a demon in her heart, and she speaks eight languages – three of the ones that aren’t English she taught herself.  People want to follow someone like that. She and Fury were the youngest in our patrol by five years. When Valkyrie decided we _needed_ to take a Czech military truck someone abandoned in the middle of the Outback, hook it onto a tanker full of water that had a smuggling compartment, and use that to Trojan Horse a white supremacist compound in the middle of fucking nowhere, and sold the idea with “anything more modern would raise suspicions” or some bollocks… Well, that’s what we did.”

Angharad sets her book down in the middle of that story. “Did it work?”

“I’m here to tell you about it, aren’t I?” Amí pulls the rear tire off one of the bikes. “Yeah, that’s done.” They kick it off to one side. “We had one other whitey on the patrol. Big woman, Polly. Full-blooded Russian. She and Lady Fury were stuck up in the cab alone with each other for most of three days while me, Valkyrie, and Nada were jammed in our fucking tiny hole together. And you can’t play cards when you’re going eighty or ninety clicks an hour off-road through the Outback. We all wanted to strangle each other at the end of it, but we got four or five dozen Neo-Nazis with fire-bombs and stolen TNT.” They smile. “Valkyrie’s bloody plan.”

Pi is fussing in Toast’s lap, trying to roll onto her back.

Angharad clears her throat. “Why do you can her Lady Fury?”

Amí shrugs. “Nada started it. Feels right. Your dearly beloved ever shows up, you’ll see.”

“I saw her go at Cheedo’s dad,” Toast murmurs. “Spooked half the horses. Only Rei – the yellow dog – would go near her for a whole day after.”

“He alive?”

“Yeah.”

Amí sweeps a palm-track of dust off the seat of the dirt bike. “If nobody left hospitalized or dead, then you haven’t seen half of her.”

“Oh,” Toast says. “Great.”

Angharad wrinkles her nose, then picks up her book again.

***

Furiosa already knows that she isn’t going to be going home with Max tonight. She stays in the house, drinking wine and petting Pi until there’s a knock at the door.

Valkyrie squeezes her hand when Furiosa stands to answer it.

Max looks a little wry, a little rumpled, a little tired. He takes her in with soft eyes. “Hey.”

She hands him Pi’s leash. “Remember the thing you didn’t want to tell me? And you said you would if it became important?”

Max nods.

“Is that still true? That you’ll tell me?”

Another nod. “Yeah.”

Furiosa breathes. “Alright.”

The wry expression has turned into a small frown. Max straightens his spine. “You okay?”

“Busy. Tired.” She shrugs.

Max’s frown doesn’t go away when he leans up to kiss her cheek. “See you tomorrow?”

She reaches out to brush her fingertips over his beard. “Yeah.”

Pi makes a tiny growl and tries to pounce on Max’s bootlaces. He nudges his foot free. “C’mon pup.”

Furiosa closes the door behind them, then pads back into the living room. “Do you want my bed?” she asks Amí. “It has to be better for your back.”

“God bless Australia,” Amí says from where they’re lying on the floor, propped up on their elbows, trying to sort out a crook in their spine. “Are your dogs going to assault me?”

“They’ll figure it out,” Valkyrie says. Furiosa drops onto the couch next to her, and she throws an arm around her shoulders. “We’ll have a sleepover like old times. With four very large space heaters. I’ll help you strip the sheets in a minute.”

“No Jackson on the bed,” Furiosa mutters. She slumps down until her head is on Valkyrie’s thigh.

Valkyrie knuckles between her shoulders. “No Nahi, then. And Rei stays on your side.”

“Fine.” Furiosa sighs. “I’ll throw Paddy at you if she farts in my face.”

“Throw my dog and I skin yours.”

“Stop talking,” Amí orders. “They’re about to blow up the cement mixer.”

***

“Pitbull cop tell you anything?”

“No.”

“Think he will?”

“Maybe.”

“That bother you?”

“Sure. Can’t change it, though.”

“Mmm.”

Furiosa waits.

“Trust him?”

“Enough.”

“Enough?”

“Enough for this. What’s coming.”

“Don’t let him fuck it up.”

“He won’t. I’ll get him out of the way if he tries.”

“That’s my girl.” Valkyrie reaches out and rubs her palm over Furiosa’s hair. “I’ll help.”

“I know.”

Rei is sprawled over her shins and Paddy is lodged between them, but they can still thread their fingers together, calluses catching, palms dry.

***

Angharad’s phone starts buzzing almost as soon as they put the battery back in. Amí nearly grabs the Ka-bar that’s strapped onto their back to crush the thing.

“This has to be justification for a restraining order or something,” they mutter, chin on their elbows, staring across the counter at it.

Angharad shrugs helplessly. “If I answer, he’s not threatening… he just wants me back. Me and the baby. That’s what all the voicemails are.”

“He hit you,” Nux says, wrestling a seventh dirty plate onto the stack in his arms. “That’s...” He catches Angharad’s expression and stops talking.

“No more listening to the messages,” Amí says. The phone stops buzzing, then immediately starts again, and they groan.

Nux props his hip against a table. “Why do you listen?”

“I want to know if he’s going to come back.” Angharad folds her hands over her stomach. “I have a month left.”

Nux’s eyes widen. “So if he thinks the baby is coming…”

Angharad nods.

“We’ll stop him if he shows up,” he says with the blind faith of someone who has never been in a warzone. “Furiosa and Valkyrie, I mean. And you,” nodding at Amí. “He doesn’t stand a chance.”

“You ever heard of Murphy’s Laws of Combat?” Amí asks him. “Professionals are predictable.” They stab a finger at the buzzing phone. “Amateurs are dangerous.”

“Someone will stop him,” Nux repeats. “We have to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to dedicate this chapter to the very large amount of money I unexpectedly had to spend on a new saddle because my tree is in the process of breaking. Take care of your gear, darlings, whether it's for your horse, your car, or your bike, and get it checked regularly.


	8. So Much, So Loud

Thursday is the first time Max has seen Toast on a horse. He thinks it’s a horse. Maybe it’s a pony. He forgets the distinction. Whatever it is, it’s dark yellow, and she rides it up to the arena fence to wave at him. “Hey,” she calls. “You done anything to the garden?”

Max shakes his head.

Toast wheels her steed around, leans down to pull open the gate, then kicks the hoofed animal of unspecified species through before it swings shut. “I was talking to Dag this morning; we thought it could use some work. Woah, Buster.” She stops just short of Pi, who scampers behind Max.

Buster snorts.

“Whatcha say?”

Max squints. “What do you want to do?”

Toast shrugs. “Pull out what’s dead, save what’s alive. Maybe plant some new stuff.” She grins. “I bet we can get Angharad to take Sunday off; it’ll be good for her to go somewhere that’s not here or the diner.”

“Mmm.”

Buster stamps one forefoot until Toast strokes his neck. “Be good for Cheedo,” she says.

Max raises his eyebrows.

“She used to hang out with the Keeper and Dag. I know Dag misses her a lot; Cheedo probably does to. That garden’s all that’s left.” A spark strikes behind her eyes. “And we could invite Maddie.”

Max snorts.

“I’m serious,” Toast says. “She and the Keeper were the token gay old ladies of Citadel who everyone thought were just golden girl gal pals. Only about four people outside the barn know that Valkyrie… okay, they assume the ‘militant’ and ‘witch’ parts, but they leave out the ‘flaming lesbian’ piece.” Her hands are full, but her tone marks the air-quotes. “I bet you nine out of ten people just think Rictus went on an extended business trip, nothing dodgy at all.”

He can feel Toast getting on a roll. “Fine.”

“It’s so _bad_. Nobody gossips – not even useful gossip; nobody goes “hey, mate, why do you think Cheedo Frajil has those bruises” – it’s all “oh, I cheated and went to _three_ church services today instead of two,” or “g’day, wanna fossick around for the boomer that wrecked my jumbuck, then go to the bottle-o in my uti for some grog so we can get rotten this arvo before Geoff’s buck night, mate?” or… oh. Okay. Cool.”

Max blinks several times. “Sunday?” he mutters.

“Yeah, Sunday sounds great.” She spins Buster around and trots ahead of them towards the barn, yelling “I’ll tell Cheedo!” over her shoulder.

Pi follows her. Max follows Pi.

***

Rictus keeps calling. Amí keeps bringing a small arsenal to the diner. Cheedo keeps dressing and acting like a normal teenager on break. Valkyrie and Furiosa drink a lot of wine. The dogs get used to Angharad being in their house.

Rictus keeps calling. Amí keeps working on the dirt bikes. Toast keeps watching them and learning. Angharad keeps one ear on them and both eyes on her paperwork. Dag spends an afternoon in the shadow of the garage and talks her into taking Sunday off. It’s hard to tell whether Amí likes any of them, but it’s especially hard to tell if they like Dag. She asks about the eye and they don’t tell her, but Angharad hasn’t heard anyone else ask either.

Rictus keeps calling. Max keeps turning up late at night to have quiet conversations with Furiosa on the front walk and pick up his puppy. Valkyrie, Furiosa, Angharad, and Amí play hearts until Angharad is falling asleep in her chair. The dogs sit watch.

Rictus keeps calling.

***

Dag has a pastel-blue Yukon that can hold eight people without a burp, but she’s bringing seeds and a lot of stuff that helps seeds grow, so the back row of seats gets folded down to make room. Angharad, Valkyrie, Furiosa, and Amí ride with her. Toast takes her Corolla into town to pick up Cheedo, Maddie, and Capable, then joins the squadron assaulting Max’s house.

They don’t exactly have a tactical strike team, but they do have Dag. She marches straight to the back of the house, to a sand-blasted wooden shed growing out of the side of the larger building like a tumor. Toast’s key opens the heavy iron padlock. Inside are enough tools to bury an army.

Dag has to inspect everything before it gets uprooted. Angharad isn’t allowed to dig or pull; Maddie hands her a gardening book that’s heavy enough to kill someone with, points her at the enormous pocketbook of seeds on the porch, and tells her to figure out which plants will do better growing next to each other.

They’ve only been at work for a few minutes when the back door rattles open and Pi bowls over herself in her rush to get out. Max blinks at all of them.

“Hey,” Capable says. “Do you have coffee?”

Max squints, then nods. He looks at Furiosa, who gives him the tiniest of smiles before he goes back inside.

Pi trots around until she finds a quiet spot in the chaos to do her business, then runs back to Angharad to demand belly rubs.

Coffee appears at the same time Nux does on a motorbike that buzzes more than it roars. Capable is equally delighted by both.

Max is more than willing to help once he gets a decent load of caffeine in his system, but he does go dig up a tube of sunscreen and stands in front of each person with a heavyset frown until they slather themselves to his satisfaction. His staring contest with Furiosa last for almost five minutes before Valkyrie throws a handful of dirt at them and Max blinks.

An hour into yanking out dead things and miraculously-sprouted weeds, Cheedo kneels with a hand shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun, and Toast kicks her onto the porch to sit with Angharad and a glass of ice water. Angharad hands her the book, then busies herself with through all of the seeds that the Keeper left behind, and watching the others.

Furiosa and Valkyrie work with their whole bodies: shoulders, wrists, knees, hips, planting feet and stretching spines so that no single portion of them is consistently forced to endure all the strain. Furiosa, obviously, favors her left side. She’s not wearing her full-hand prosthetic, but the clamp, the one Angharad has seen her wear for mucking stalls.

Capable does a lot with the brute strength in her arms: lifting, holding. Nux has broader shoulders, but she has stronger legs; he hauls, she _levers_. Nux is the first one to take his shirt off. Maddie wolf-whistles at him.

Toast is smaller than the rest of them, but she carries a lot of power in her legs and knows how to use them. When she picks up a bag of mulch she keeps her back straight, slings the bag over her shoulder, and then uses her arms exclusively to balance it while she straightens out of her crouch. Maddie has too many bad joints to be dragging plants out of the ground or hoisting bags of dirt, but she’ll hammer away at the root systems with tiny, precise jabs until enough of the roots are loose for her to tug it free without wrenching anything.

Pi doesn’t take long to turn into a brown dog, and none of them are safe from the spray when she shakes off the loose dirt.

Dag is tall and lean and whipcord; she bends easily. She can fold up her legs, sink her fingers into the dirt, and come away with something almost whole in her hand. Angharad watches Max watch her do it a couple times before he tries, but he invariably leaves half the root system behind and has to pull it out piece by piece. His left knee is still bad enough that he doesn’t want to use it as leverage unless he has to, but he’s more willing to brace with the right. Amí does everything with steady precision, one eye or no: everything gone if it’s dead, only the viable parts left if it’s alive, fingers steady, no gloves.

Capable finds a green caterpillar with a yellow stripe and four tiny horns on its head and kicks Nux in the shin when he pretends that he’s going to eat it. She escorts it to the safety of Cheedo’s knee where she’s got her legs stretched out, sitting in one chair with her feet propped up on another. Cheedo is scrawny and brown everywhere Angharad is plump and pale; she smiles at the caterpillar and holds out her fingers for it to crawl on, then sets it on her shoulder. “Thank you,” she says to Capable.

Even sitting in the shade, sorting seeds, Angharad is sticky with sweat by the time all the dead plants are gone. Those in the sun are dripping.

“I gotta beg off planting,” Amí says between lungfuls of water when they take a break. “My back’s already going to be sore tomorrow.”

“I can start helping again,” Cheedo offers. They’ve all paused to slap sandwiches together using stacks of meat and a small assortment of veggies that Max pulled out of his fridge. Furiosa and Valkyrie both made triple-deckers with turkey and ham, respectively. Valkyrie can stretch her jaw enough to fit hers in her mouth; Furiosa can’t.

Maddie is probably in the same condition as Amí, but she doesn’t mention it, just insists on paging through Dag’s book and examining the seed/plant-map that Cheedo and Angharad have drawn up. Keeper’s pocketbook has every kind of edible plant Angharad has ever heard of and then several dozen she hasn’t. They plant celery, spinach, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, basil, parsnips, potatoes, bush beans, and devote an entire square meter to lettuce and cabbage.

“You have to take some, when it grows,” Max tells them when he sees them hauling all the seeds out of the pocketbook. “It’s too much for one.”

“You have to take care of it so it grows in the first place and not forget about it,” Toast says, her chin resting on top of Pi’s head while the puppy licks sweat-salt off her hands.

Valkyrie stuffs the last bite of sandwich into her mouth and swallows without appearing to chew. “We can ride over a couple times a week to check on it.”

Cheedo perks up. “Can I come?”

“If you’re not in school or with Dag, sure.”

Dag is flopped on one of Max’s armchairs. “I want the spinach.”

“I’ll fight you for it,” Maddie says. She squares up with her gnarled raisin fists.

“Fifty-fifty? And I want some parsnips.”

A moment of hesitation. “Fine.” Maddie glances around. “Anyone else claiming radishes?”

“Beans and potatoes are all I care about,” Valkyrie volunteers.

Angharad glances at the book. “Those are easy. Some of the basil would be nice.” She tries to smile. “Assuming you two are rid of me by the time it’s grown.”

“I love basil,” Furiosa murmurs. She’s slower than Valkyrie at getting through her sandwich, but she’s making it work.

Max must not know how soft his face gets when he looks at Furiosa. “Are we donating the carrots to the horses?”

“As many as you’ll let us take.”

Max nods. His face says a lot more.

Capable hums. “I’d like a little of everything.” When Dag and Maddie start to protest she throws up her hands. “We have a _huge_ garden. We can plant extra spinach.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Toast mutters. “I wanted some of that too.”

Amí rolls their eye. “I’ll take some of the tomatoes if I’m around.” They flick two fingers at Cheedo and Nux. “What you two want?”

Cheedo shrugs.

Nux glances at her, then at Capable, then around the room. “Celery? And… a few radishes.”

Maddie flicks a loose scrap of lettuce at him and grumbles to herself.

“I don’t know how to cook,” Cheedo mumbles, seconds late at explaining. “I just like watching things grow.”

Capable leans over to stroke her hair. “Let’s see what we have in a couple weeks. If anything lives, I’ll teach you.”

Max makes disgruntled noises until Furiosa elbows him. He retaliates by trying to steal what’s left of her sandwich. She has him in a chokehold in under four seconds.

“Get a room!” Valkyrie yells, hands cupped around her mouth. Her eyebrows twitch. “Hey, Toast, wanna run an errand with me?”

Toast sets Pi down. “What?”

“Lunch hay, checking on the dogs, and prepping dinner feeds? And picking up some wine?”

“No wine before we finish planting; I don’t need to be haunted because we planted crooked rows.”

“Fine. You coming?”

“Can I help?” Cheedo asks. “With feeds?”

“Sure. Let’s go.” Valkyrie sweeps the room with her gaze, then points at Furiosa and Max where they’re leaning against the counter next to each other, very close but not touching. “Get a spray bottle for them or something.”

Amí – in short sleeves, shirt clingy with sweat – leans down out of Angharad’s view and comes up with a throwing knife and a grin.

Valkyrie gives them a thumbs-up.

***

After so much digging and cutting and pulling, planting and watering are easy. Capable’s shoulders and back will be sore tomorrow, but tomorrow there will be a garden and fresh brown dirt instead of white and yellow death, so it’ll be worth it.

Angharad allows herself half a glass, Cheedo doesn’t want any, and Dag has declared herself designated driver (“Because if I drink, I’ll get called into emergency surgery; it’s happened three times already”), but everyone else breaks into the wine as soon as the last box is planted, less than an hour before sunset. They sit in Max’s – Keeper’s – living room, all of them blasted with dirt. Once the shadows got long even Angharad insisted on helping; she has brown dusted up to her shoulders.

Maddie bows out early with the plight of age, but her wrinkled bean of a face has a bigger smile than Capable has ever seen it hold. Dag drives her and Cheedo home, and Valkyrie, Capable, and Toast hitch a ride to feed the dogs and horses dinner and prep their breakfast grain. They come back an hour later, sans Toast, to find half of Max’s kitchen out on the counter and Amí wrapping up “better fried rice than you have any idea how to make, even with these white boy ingredients”. It has eggs and bacon and two kinds of onions and a couple scraps of chicken, and garlic – there’s almost an entire head of garlic in there. It’s hot and amazing and Capable eats as much as Nux, tucked in against him on the couch, watching Mythbusters. Pi is asleep against Nux’s thigh and there’s always another bottle of wine.

Furiosa takes her prosthetic off. She’s sitting on the floor, has her stump slung across Valkyrie’s shoulders, her feet in Max’s lap, and a glass of wine in her hand. She’s talking with Amí and Valkyrie about another old military friend of theirs, some woman named Polly.

“I think she’s still Brizzy,” Amí is saying. “We haven’t heard from her in a long time.”

“Because she hates you?” Valkyrie asks.

“If she hates me, she really hates you.”

“She hates everyone,” Furiosa mutters. “She’s Russian.”

“I don’t even think she likes other Russians.” Valkyrie adds.

“Oh, she hates other Russians as much or more as she hates everyone else.” Amí drains their glass and leans to refill it. “Losing the leg didn’t help.” They gesture at Furiosa with the empty glass. “At least we took the disabilities with dignity, yeah?”

Furiosa shakes her head. “We were not even a little bit dignified in that hospital room.”

“Hospital doesn’t count. Also, you were drugged. So bad. _So_ bad. They don’t give you the good stuff for losing an eye, apparently, or I wouldn’t have cared so much.”

Valkyrie nudges Furiosa. “Didn’t you try to kill a doctor?” she murmurs.

“Something like that.”

“Yeah.” Amí bobs their head enthusiastically. “With a… didn’t you rip the IV out of your arm and try to stab her with the needle?”

“I don’t remember,” Furiosa says pleasantly. “I was drugged.” She sips her wine, then tilts her head back. “Hey, Nux?”

Nux startles. “Yeah?”

“Shut up,” Capable says before Furiosa can continue. “She’s looking for an excuse to tell you a story.”

“What story?”

“The somersault story?” Valkyrie asks.

“What other story is there?”

Max clears his throat. “Somersault story?” Capable almost throws something at him.

“Yeah,” Furiosa says, and launches into it. “Used to have a pretty bad-tempered mare in our lesson program. Three or four years ago, we put Capable on her. Mare’s name is Gracie. She did… something. Maybe tripped, and then started throwing bucks to make up for it. Capable goes over her head, does a complete somersault in the air-”

“There’s a stone wall marking the property line along one side of the arena,” Valkyrie interjects. “There wasn’t always a fence in front of it. We put that in after.”

Max raises his eyebrows at Capable. “You hit your head on it.”

She gives him a half-smile, then mimes smacking her forehead. “Split my helmet down the middle. I was out for two days.”

“I remember that,” Angharad says. “I was there when she woke up. Me, Furiosa, her parents, and her parents’ preacher.”

Furiosa snorts, then sets down her wine glass so she can hold up two fingers. “Capable opens her eyes, looks at us. Asks two questions. First one: “Is Gracie okay?” Second one: “Am I dead?”” She picks up her glass again. “Five minutes earlier, they’re telling us she might have permanent brain damage.”

“But I _didn’t_.”

Valkyrie shrugs. “That we know of.”

Capable waves her off. “I lived.”

“There are a lot of ways to live.” Dag says it like she’s reading a portent. She’s so pale that she’s been sunburned most of the times Capable has seen her, and today hasn’t been any different. She had pink on her nose and cheeks when she arrived in the morning; now her arms and the area of her shoulders not covered by her shirt are red and irritated, and Capable watched her put on sunscreen three different times. Her fingers look extraordinarily long when she curls them around her glass of water. “You two should know.”

“I know how to make things blow up, and I have a pretty good record of not getting blown up myself,” Amí says. They blink. “Really only happened the once.”

Valkyrie glances at Furiosa, then behind them at Pi. “Hey, Dag, what kind of vaccinations is that puppy going to need next week?”

***

Rei and Paddy and Valkyrie aren’t in the bed when Furiosa wakes up with a hangover. She’s also on the wrong side of bed. She’s also fully dressed minus boots, there’s a pillow propped up in front of her, and Pi is sitting almost on top of her head, licking her hair.

She has to nudge Pi off with her stump before she can sit up. On the other side of the pillow barricade, Max is lying with his back to her, shirtless and unmoving, but he rolls over when she clears her throat.

His “Morning” comes out croaky and rumbling.

“Anyone else spend the night?”

Max shakes his head.

Furiosa squeezes her eyes shut. “I blacked out from wine,” she mutters.

Max laughs out of his chest. “Dag went poking around a couple old holes I didn’t know about. Found tequila.”

Furiosa opens her eyes. “Do I get to kill Amí or Valkyire?”

Max pulls Pi onto his chest and doesn’t answer. When she glares, he lifts Pi so she hides his face.

“Fool, put the dog down. If you won’t tell me, it was Valkyrie.” She takes Pi away from him and sets her on the pillow again. “So I got embarrassingly drunk, clearly. Please tell me someone else did, too.”

Max smiles. “You won a drinking contest with Nux.”

“...Ah.”

“He had a technicolor yawn in the toilet. Was very apologetic. And then they took him home.”

“‘They’ is Capable and Dag?”

Max nods and makes a small widening gesture with his hands. “Valkyrie too. Amí and Angharad were already gone.” He goes a little pink. “You… wanted… to stay.”

Furiosa looks between them. “So you built a pillow wall because I’m Cameron Diaz and we’re in The Other Woman?”

Max shrugs. “It worked?”

“You’re short a few plot points. A marriage and a lot of affairs, namely.”

“You have the big dogs.” Max fends Pi off when she tries to chew on his ear, so she settles for his fingers. “And…” He stops.

“And you’d die trying to put me in a straightjacket?” Furiosa guesses.

Max twitches his eyebrows. “Maybe.”

Furiosa shoves the pillow out of her way, relocates Pi to the other side of the bed, and climbs into the open space over Max. He’s got on sweatpants and nothing else. Her jeans are unreasonably confining. Her forearms frame Max’s face while she traces his hairline. “Time?”

“Before seven.”

“Good.” She kisses Max just to feel him crane up and fold his arms over her back, then presses her face into his neck and hums.

He strokes her hair. “Aspirin?”

“Yes, please,” she says, and rolls off of him. Pi tackles her hand.

Max traces his fingers over her stump as he climbs out of bed and pads out of the bedroom. Furiosa lies on her back, waggling her fingers for Pi to attack, tracing the whorls in the ceiling, trying to muster up a sense of urgency about missing morning feeds or needing to prep for a lesson. She thinks of Angharad. Either she or Max had the forethought to leave her phone on the nightstand, but there are no missed calls or messages waiting for her. The world has not fallen apart because she spent the night somewhere else.

Max comes back with aspirin and a glass of water that she chugs down in one go while he collapses on the bed again. He wraps his arms around her waist as she sets the glass down, then kisses her hip. “You’re a cuddly drunk,” he tells her.

“I know.” She scrubs at her hair. “How bad?”

Max shrugs. “Not bad. It was nice.”

“Mmm.” Furiosa knuckles at his shoulder. “You trying to sleep more?”

He makes a hopeful noise.

Furiosa smiles. She pokes Max’s arm so he loosens his grip, then slides down until she’s on her back and lets him tuck his face into her shoulder. She scratches her fingers through his hair while Pi climbs onto her sternum to fall asleep again. Max’s arm folds over her waist again, reaching across the width of her to trace the end of her stump. He hums. Furiosa breathes.


	9. Castles Unbuilt

Sleepy Furiosa is still a pile of hard muscle drawn taunt with stress. He has to look for the soft parts: the crook of her shoulder, the spread of her stomach, the cushions of her thighs. When she gets tired of Max’s fussing she elbows him onto his back and tucks her head over his heart. Invariably, Pi pounces on them to wake them up ten minutes later.

They eat leftover fried rice for breakfast and split a pot of coffee, and Furiosa thumbs at the back of his neck when he doesn’t put sugar in hers. Maybe she crowds him against the counter and kisses him afterwards because of that. Maybe it’s just because she wants to. Max can’t figure it out.

She has to go teach a lesson; he has to water the garden. He drives her home. Kissing in the car is quiet: a hand on her hair, a touch over his chin. Then she climbs out.

***

Angharad and Capable – as the two morning-shift staffers of the diner who did _not_ engage in a drinking contest with a Special Air Service Regiment veteran – do not even pretend to have mercy on Nux when he shows up at eight complaining of a splitting headache. They both look bone-tired already; waking up at four when you went to bed at midnight will do that to a person.

Amí eats the mess of fried eggs Capable hands them, drinks coffee until the throbbing in their skull becomes a high-wire vibration muffled by ibuprofen, and leaves him to suffer.

It is not a quiet morning. A lot of Angharad’s regulars are grumpy and want to lecture her for closing the diner for two days out of the last week. There are three screaming babies before Nux shows up, and at least six inattentive tourist fathers who deserve to be kicked in the teeth. There’s a toddler who tries to climb onto the stool next to Amí because _no one is watching them,_ so they get to rescue someone who doesn’t understand the concept of numbers from a concussion they will never remember almost getting.

By the time Nux gets in, Amí has pulled off their sunglasses and teamed up with Capable to deliver all the food so people will leave Angharad alone. It makes a couple of the men blink. It makes a couple of the women smile.

Max gets in early, but Angharad refuses to leave before noon, so they have a standoff over control of the front counter until the last of the morning customers leaves and Angharad agrees to sit down. Capable appears with an avocado sandwich for her and makes a fresh pot of coffee. Nux clears the final plates. By the time the coffee is done, he’s sitting next to Angharad with his crossword. It is quiet. For three seconds.

“Can I ask a question?” Capable is looking at Amí. If Amí doesn’t let her ask her question, they’re never going to get free diner food ever again.

“What?”

“The way you were talking last night, it sounded like you and Furiosa got hurt at the same time.”

“That’s not a question.”

Capable raises her eyebrows. “Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Afghanistan,” Max murmurs.

Amí looks at him. “Lady Fury tell you that?”

He gives one jerky nod.

Angharad swallows a mouthful of avocado and bread. “Is that true?”

“I mean…” Amí shrugs one shoulder. “We were deployed to Afghanistan. We may technically have been in Pakistan at that point, but we were somewhere near the border. It was up in the mountains; they don’t exactly have a border patrol.” They look around. “She hasn’t told you anything, has she?”

Four heads shake.

Cue heavy sigh. “Okay. I will tell you this story, and you will understand why Lady Fury doesn’t talk about her arm. And you will maybe learn a lesson about getting knocked unconscious with more than one witness in a high-stress situation.”

Capable frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Amí pokes at a scratch in the countertop’s plastic finish. “Your story about getting tossed off the horse and knocked out for two days. You don’t remember it, but Fury sees it, and she tells you that you hit your head on a stone wall, and she probably shows you your busted helmet, and you take that as fact and believe her. Now. For reasons that I’m about to elaborate on, Fury, who you all know and love, who is defined in the minds of most people by her little cyborg arm rig, actually has no idea why she does not have most of her left forearm.” They pause. “You don’t keep any decent booze in here, do you?”

“Just tell the story,” Angharad mutters.

“Fine. The story starts with me and Fury hating each other.”

The story has a lot of background. Furiosa being a raging, murder-happy shithead for one, and always at the wrong people. The Israelis hated her. The Turks hated her. Any Western-friendly government with a minority they wanted to oppress hated her. They’re all lucky she was long gone by the time Arab Spring rolled around, because god forbid the kid take the side of the people funding her paychecks instead of the ones they were supposed to be controlling.

Then again, maybe she’d have gotten Assad out of the way. And maybe Daesh would have been magically prevented from steamrolling a track across Syria. Or maybe she would have cooked up an even bigger mess than the present one.

Furiosa was twenty-seven years old going on twenty-eight when they hit that IED. Their patrol had been together for five years, she had not settled down even a little bit, and Amí wanting to poke a hole in her jugular was a regular occurrence.

But this is getting ahead of the story.

“You know how there are standard-issue vets who talk about swerving into oncoming traffic because they think a plastic bag or roadkill is an IED? That’s kind of standard training for life in that part of the world.”

It was some shitty little dirt road outside of Jalalabad, trying to find some hidey-hole with a bucket of terrorists patiently waiting to be assaulted, and the thing was fucking littered with land mines. Which was good, in a sense, because it meant that they were on the right track, but also bad because land mines are fucking land mines and the only good land mine is a land mine that doesn’t exist.

“Furiosa would follow Valkyrie off a cliff, then beat her to the bottom so her corpse could cushion Valkyrie’s landing. It was more or less the same for me and Nada. So Polly, being a misanthrope with no concept of how human relationships work, declared that we should ride in the front truck, the G Wagon, because we might care enough about saving the people behind us to not kill each other.” Amí knuckles at their forehead. “I should note that we were both certified explosives experts – us and Nada, who was driving the second truck, the Bushmaster. I was driving the Wagon.”

Beautiful days don’t really exist, except in hindsight, in mountainous desert hellscapes full of people who you’re supposed to kill. But it was probably a nice day. A really nice day. No clouds.

“There was a plastic bag in the road. White plastic shopping bag, like they had everywhere back then. This was 2002. Nobody except Al Gore believed in climate change.” Swallow. “It was such a cliché, but I had, you know, my favorite person ever in the truck fifty meters behind me, so I swung around it as wide as I could.”

The countertop really is fascinating.

“Still went off?” Nux asks when they don’t continue.

Amí folds their arms over their chest. “They planted two. I drove right over the second one. Concussive force of that set off the one hidden in the plastic bag. We went up, and then we went sideways. Down the slope of the mountain.”

They’d had the windows open – not even for fresh air, because of all the dust that was getting kicked up, but because they were trying to watch and listen around themselves for an ambush so they didn’t have to talk to each other. Amí remembers yelling something as the front of the truck lurched upwards, trying to get unbuckled, shrapnel and pebbles boiling in through their window. Furiosa was quiet. Then the truck’s nose came down, vertical against the hillside, Amí’s door half-open, and there was the snap.

“I remember lying on my back in this scrubby, spikey grass – which is a lot like the stuff that grows out here – and…” a touch to the hole in their skull. “I had only half my vision, but I could feel that my eye was open. And I couldn’t blink it. And then I tried to look at something” – the sky, cut sharp against the mountain; maybe it was beautiful – “and started screaming until I passed out. Woke up in the hospital. Broken back. No eye. And that’s easy to believe, because all three people in the Bushmaster tell the same story: they left the shrapnel in my eye and let the doctors deal with it.”

Everyone looks some degree of pitying and/or nauseated and disturbed, which is why Amí is telling this part first, because pity for someone who is permanently disabled is a paper jacket in a rainstorm. At least Angharad isn’t staring at them. She looks distant and lost, watching the wall behind Max.

 “This, kiddies, is where we get to the good part.”

There in that hospital was a fucking horrible way to wake up. But Fury was in the bed to their right. And Fury did not have a hand.

“There are three different accounts of what happened to Fury. They all agree that they found her much further down the mountain, most of the way outside the truck, that she was – initially – awake and also talking and coherent, and that her left hand and wrist were trapped between the roof and the rest of the truck, which had more or less crushed itself into a tin can. This is also where Lady Fury’s memory gives out; she’ll tell you that much, and that she woke up in a hospital a couple days later with no hand, and that she and I had the best bonding session of our lives until they let us out.”

“Amí,” Capable murmurs. “You don’t have to tell it like it’s a joke.” Her tone feels like getting stabbed.

“It is a fucking joke. Everything humans have ever done is a fucking joke. And this is my joke, and Fury’s joke, because we were both there, and we have no idea what happened, and we are never going to know the truth because of how humans and their shitty minds work. Can you let me have this?”

Capable’s expression veers towards pity, then settles for pale sadness. She takes Nux’s hand.

Amí clears their throat and holds up one finger. “Polly swears that they pried Fury’s arm out of there, at her demand, that she was unconscious by the time they were done, that they hauled us to the nearest field hospital – which was still a solid day’s drive away – and that when they got there the doctors took one look at the mess of gore that was left of her hand and sliced it all off.” A second finger. “Nada says Fury was awake for the whole thing. Wide awake and panicked and barely thinking. Nada says she cut off her hand herself and made a fucking hash of it, so they had to take off some more at the hospital.” Finger number three. “Valkyrie also says that she was panicking, thought the explosions would bring some really nasty attention down on us, and was begging them to cut her arm free. So Valkyrie did. And then, again, the hospital and the doctors cleaning up the mess.” And it’s done. Done.

It’s quiet.

“Those are three very different stories,” Angharad says.

“It’s all who cut the arm off,” Nux answers, then flinches at his own words.

Angharad folds her hands on the countertop. “Polly’s story: qualified professionals make a decision to save an unconscious patient. Nada’s story: someone makes a decision about their own body. Maybe she was in a compromised mental state, but it was still her own actions at the end of the day.” She takes a shuddering breath. “With Valkyrie’s story, she took off someone’s arm, and they don’t remember asking her to do it.” She brings her hands up to her face and stops talking.

“And if you take the common elements,” Capable murmurs, “You have…”

“You have something real ugly,” Amí says. “You’re not the only one who has thought about this.” They glance at Max to avoid the cold shiver tracking through their vertebrae. “You been quiet, pitbull cop.”

Max shakes his head. “Listening.”

“Yeah? You gonna run now? Never come back?”

“No,” Max says. He doesn’t add more.

Angharad nudges Amí’s shoulder. “Can we go home? To the barn?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

***

“Was that true? All of that?”

“It was the worst month of my life; why would it not be true?”

“Because it sounds like you hated her. Furiosa.”

“She was a kid before. After, we were the only people on the planet who didn’t pity each other. That’ll change you a little bit.”

Angharad goes quiet for a minute. “How much did it change you?”

Amí snorts. “If anything, it gave me an excuse to be angry.” They pat their weapon vest. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

***

Max is the most distant that Furiosa has ever seen him when he comes to pick up Pi. He’s stuck somewhere inside his own head, and she doesn’t have the energy to drag him out. He’s fumbling for words at the door, Pi winding her leash around his ankle, when she runs out of her last reserves.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Max?”

He blinks. “Okay.”

“You alright?”

“Fine.”

She touches his beard with her fingertips; his eyes flicker towards hers, and something in the air relaxes. “Night.”

Max nods. He catches her hand to kiss her knuckles, then drops it and pulls his foot free of Pi’s leash so she can lead the charge down the driveway.

Furiosa watches until their shadows are indistinguishable from the rest of the night, then goes back inside.

Amí’s the only one still awake, sitting on the couch with their laptop, feet propped up on the coffee table, Rei asleep under their legs. “How’s your boyfriend?”

“Not that.” Furiosa kicks their calf so they squeeze over and let her drop next to them. “Why do you care?”

Amí scratches their nose. “Mighta told him about Afghanistan. Him and the rest of that diner crew, ‘cept Maddie.”

“Ah.” Furiosa rests her head against the back of the couch. “Wish I’d been there to hear you tell it.”

“No, you don’t.” Amí pats her hand. “Kept it short. You being a shithead. Two bombs. Three stories. You lose the arm; I lose the eye and fuck up my back. All done.” They pause. “Have I told you that you shouldn’t ever break your back? It’s horrible.”

“You always forget that I cracked my skull,” Furiosa murmurs.

“That is true, innit? Shit.”

“’S okay.” She closes her eyes. “Angharad seemed fine.”

“’Cause she didn’t think about it any longer than she had to. She never stops going forward. She doesn’t let herself not be fine. That’ll mess her up bad someday.”

“We’ll take care of her,” Furiosa says.

She can feel Amí shake their head. “Can’t take care of a corpse, kid.”

“Shut up.”

Amí shrugs. “You know it too.”

***

Max wants to talk to Furiosa approximately the same amount that he doesn’t want to talk to her. But talking to her necessitates planning and effort, while not talking to her simply requires him to run into Valkyrie, Cheedo, or Toast first when he brings Pi over in the morning. He finds Toast first, on her pony-horse-thing again, and finally asks what it is.

“Buster’s a pony,” she says. “Bit on the big side, but still a pony. And an ass – watch your hand.”

Valkyrie’s on the phone in the office. She nods when he holds up Pi’s leash, then scribbles something on a piece of paper and shoves it at him: _Is Cheedo here yet?_

Max writes _Haven’t seen her_ and kisses the top of Pi’s head before he traps the end of her leash under a chair and goes to work. Nobody is hungover; Nux wants to know if anything has sprouted in the garden yet; Angharad is on her third day of no calls from Rictus; the worst thing Max has to handle is telling Nux there’s a table to clean when he’s spent too long in the kitchen.

In the lull between lunch and dinner, a man in sunglasses who is a decade Max’s senior and has had a stroke at some point sits at the counter and asks for a mug of tea. When he says “Mr. Rockatansky,” Nux almost drops a stack of plates before Max shoos him away.

“Can I help you?” he grits, and tastes the storm coming in the back of his mouth.

“Jon Frajil,” the man says, and holds out a pale, meaty paw that he clearly expects Max to shake. “You know my daughter.”

Max nods, but doesn’t touch him. “Cheedo.”

He gets corrected: “Chelsea. That’s her real name. She didn’t come home last night. Her mother and I are… worried, to say the least. We were hoping you or one of your connections might have some way to find her.”

“Connections,” Max says.

Frajil nods. “I was under the impression you are a retired federal police officer?”

Max looks away, towards Nux, who is planted like a tree with five plates in his hands and all of the blood drained out of his face. He’s trying to mouth a name.

“Chelsea’s a difficult child,” Frajil is saying. “She wanders. We do our best to control her, but she’s always come home at night. Until now.”

“Haven’t seen her,” Max says.

“When was the last time you did?”

The answer is easy: Monday morning. At the barn. Leaning against a fat gray pony while it grazed. She said the pony’s name was Lily. Furiosa was riding Pearl again.

Frajil prods: “Those… people you live down the road from. Those two women with the horses. Was it there? Or with that vet?”

“I saw her Sunday,” Max says. “I was driving through town. She was near the grocery store.”

Frajil perks up. “When?”

“Don’t remember. Afternoon.”

Nux vanishes into the kitchen.

Frajil writes down the time and location and refuses to leave until Max signs under the statement, “Want to keep a record, you know”. He isn’t much of a smiler, but he does insist on shaking Max’s hand when he goes – he has one of those bone-crushing grips that Max has seen a lot of.

His car has been out of the parking lot for ninety seconds when Valkyrie’s bike roars into the exact same spot in front of the door. She thunders inside, takes a sweeping glance to process the two occupied tables, then calls for Nux to mind the counter and drags Max into Angharad’s office by the front of his shirt.

“What did he want?” she demands as soon as the door is closed. “The Ace.”

“The Ace,” Max repeats. He processes. “Frajil? Gang member?”

Valkyrie shoves him so hard he stumbles. “ _War Boy_ ,” she hisses. “He’s a former _fucking_ War Boy like killed your _fucking_ wife.”

Max doesn’t breathe for most of a minute while Valkyrie watches and fumes. It’s hard to think. It’s hard to do anything except shake.

She gets impatient quick. “Nux said he was looking for Cheedo?”

Max nods.

“What’d you say?”

“Lied,” he mutters, and she relaxes by the barest fraction of a degree. “In town. Sunday. He wanted to point fingers at you two and Dag.”

Valkyrie’s arms are folded over her chest, gripping her biceps. “You’re the cop. You think they’ve got her locked up and are putting on a show, or is she really gone?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, _think._ ”

“ _I can’t_.”

Valkyrie slaps him with an open palm across his cheek. It makes him shake harder until he catches the snarled-up terror in her eyes and forces a gulp of air into his lungs. Cheedo’s already a victim. She may be more of one in the very near future. This is nothing.

“She wouldn’t run out and away,” he mutters. “She’s convinced she has regular parents. If she did, she’d go to you or Dag.”

“She hasn’t. She can’t. Dag’s out of town.”

“For what?”

“Some friend’s wedding. She left last night, gets home late tomorrow.” Valkyrie rubs at her temples with one hand. “Of all the people for you to not run a background check on…”

“I _did_ ,” Max protests. “As soon as Furiosa told me. There was nothing.”

Valkyrie’s eyebrows climb the plane of her forehead. “Do the Fed Police and the military share a database?”

“I don’t know.” Max manages something that approximates a sigh, a little more in control of his breathing. “One of your people dig up the affiliation?”

“Yeah. He even had a conviction – spent, now, but still. There was really nothing from yours?”

Max shakes his head. “How high up is your person?”

Valkyrie’s expression is too strained to support a smile. “She’s in charge of a ninety-person sabre squadron that handles counterterrorism and backs up the police when they need extra help – providing security at the Olympics and World Cup, stuff like that. But she did her background check after your guy did, so if there’s a mole, they’re in the police.”

Max feels slightly sick, but he nods. He has to forge through the fog in his brain to get the individual words out. “What can I do?”

“Stay here,” Valkyrie says. “Even if they’re not watching you, word will get around if the diner closes early again. Don’t call your cop buddies. Don’t let Nux leave before his shift is over. Don’t tell Maddie. Call me or Fury if you hear anything.” She pauses. “Don’t be a fucking fool.”

“Fine,” Max says. He follows her back to the front, watches her stalk out the door, leather jacket sweeping around her knees, listens for the roar of her bike. It’s a hot day to be wearing leather; a hot day to be anywhere, doing anything. The night will be frigid in comparison.

Nux is vibrating and bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Sorry, sorry,” he mutters to Max. “I had to call her.”

Max waves him off. “Table Three,” he says. It’s cluttered with empty dishes and mugs, and his brain can only stretch so far in one moment. The front door looks like a barred and locked prison gate right now. There’s a terrified kid somewhere on the other side.

Nux leaves him to his chaos, and Max doesn’t register other humans for a while. When the two tables come up to pay at the same time, he works on autopilot, doesn’t remember the interaction as anything beyond faces and money, and tries to pull together a list of places Cheedo might go, if she really is missing instead of locked up. He doesn’t know which church her family goes to, or how much she trusts any of her friends. There are three hundred people in the town. They don’t even have their own school. Cheedo might not be in Citadel anymore, if she was desperate enough. If you’re going to run, why go anywhere that you might be found? Why not pick a random direction and go and go and go until your adrenaline runs out?

***

He’s throwing out the trash when he hears a truck engine. Inside, Furiosa is sitting at the counter with Pi in her lap. She doesn’t bother to piece together a smile when she sees him.

“No Cheedo,” Max assumes.

“No Cheedo.” Furiosa cradles Pi and lets her lick her chin. “We couldn’t make it obvious that we were looking here, but we checked with her friends in some of the nearby towns, all the churches, everywhere her parents might skip over.”

Max leans against the counter. He takes Pi when Furiosa holds her out; she sniffles at his shoulder.

“We had to tell Angharad what we were doing; she can’t decide whether to be afraid or angry. And we called Dag to let her know.”

“Capable?” Max asks.

“Her too. She and Toast did most of the looking in Citadel, since they’re… less obvious.” Her eyes try to smile, but the rest of her face doesn’t make it. “If her parents hadn’t said anything, we would all have assumed that they had just barred her from leaving the house again. They’ve never claimed that she’s run off before.”

“Maybe she has,” Max says.

Her expression twists. “To _where_?”

He shrugs helplessly. Hours into it, it’s easier to think. “Her parents can file a Missing Persons at any time. If she was an adult who didn’t want to be found, the police couldn’t tell anyone where she was without her permission. Since she’s only fifteen, I don’t know what can or can’t happen.”

“If she’s running from abuse?”

“She would have to be willing to admit that.”

Furiosa sighs.

Pi gets her paws on Max’s shoulder and pulls herself up to nose at his ear. She sneezes at it.

“We have an event we’re supposed to go to this week. Friday and Saturday. If Cheedo’s not back by then, I’m gonna need you to keep watch for her. Anywhere she might be.”

“Okay,” Max says. He looks at the clock, ticking on towards midnight. “Going home?”

She nods.

Max braces Pi with one arm so he can brush his knuckles against Furiosa’s. “Will you sleep?”

She raises her eyebrows at him.

Max hesitates, then shrugs the shoulder not supporting Pi. “If you want…”

“You asking me to come over? Now?”

Max twists his hand so it’s palm-up, fingers open, loose. He watches Furiosa’s eyes.

She takes his hand.

***

She curls around him in the bed, his spine against her chest, their legs tangled together, her hand on his ribs, his fingers caught around hers.

“Amí told us about your arm,” he says.

She kisses his shoulder. “Valkyrie told me about the War Boys.”

Max sighs. “Yeah.” It’s not a question; it hangs in the air. Yeah. Yes. The War Boys. Her arm. This wreck.

“Go to sleep,” Furiosa murmurs.

Max shifts under her arm, settling himself, then grips her hand tighter and hums quietly when she presses her face into the back of his neck. His breathing pattern shifts towards something slower, heavier. Pi is an immobile ball of gray fur at the end of the bed. Angharad is asleep with Valkyrie and Amí and all the dogs there to protect her. Toast is home. Capable is home. Cheedo is in the wind. Somewhere, there are War Boys circling.

Furiosa doesn’t sleep, and she’s pretty sure Max doesn’t either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to have many opportunities to write for the next week due to a short trip that I'll be going on followed by back-to-college mayhem, but I'll still (hopefully) have time/internet access to answer comments and such. And you can always come find me on tumblr (thentherewasfury) if you want to watch me be an angry feminist rage monster and yell about politics and why the Gloamglozer is the best villain ever.  
> This story still has plenty of gas in the tank; we're just taking a pit stop.


	10. Ghosting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love violence as much as the next Fury Road fan, but I do recognize that there are multiple categories of it. As a sexual assault victim, I cannot read the overwhelming majority of fics that this fandom produces because I'm fucking sick of getting blindsided by Furiosa rape backstories that many people will slap on without tagging just because the (terrible) Furiosa comic mentions her being a former wife, and because, even if it is tagged, I really don't want to relive my experience of years of self-loathing and shame every time I try to read a story about my favorite fictional lady. (I'll yell about how much I hate that comic if you come talk to me on tumblr.)   
> Obviously, this is a story with two abuse victims. In the interest of keeping it readable for as many people as possible, details have been skimmed. Nux's description of Angharad's abuse a few chapters back is as detailed as this is going to get on the abuse front.  
> I'll happily write ten thousand words of Furiosa murdering people, but I'm not trying to make anyone relive their nightmares.

She’s awake; raw, nerve-strung. There’s a bad taste clinging to her gums.

Paddy pokes Valkyrie’s arm with her nose and whines.

 _We’re alive_ is looping in her brain. _We’re alive._ No sand in her teeth, no dust coating her throat, no blood encrusted in the corners of her eyes. _We’re alive_.

Angharad and Amí are about to leave when she walks into the kitchen. Most of the lights are off. Dawn is still an hour away. Angharad has to do everything around the growing pod of her belly, but she still hugs Valkyrie. “We’ll call you if there’s anything,” she says.

“Thanks.”

Amí punches her shoulder. “Go back to bed, demon-woman.”

“I outrank you,” Valkyrie tells them. She stuffs her hands in the pockets of her sweatpants and follows them towards the front door.

“Great. I’m older. Go to bed.” Amí clasps Valkyrie’s forearm and squeezes once, then nudges her back towards her bedroom, watching from the doorway while Angharad starts her car.

Valkyrie closes the door to her bedroom between herself and that glaring eye. All four dogs pile onto the bed with her while she drags the sheets up again. Nahi and Rei curl up almost on top of each other while Jackson sacks out against her legs. Paddy climbs over him and tries to lick Valkyrie’s face.

***

Max doesn’t remember falling asleep or rolling over, but he wakes up facing Furiosa with his head tucked in against her neck while her hand traces smooth curves across his back. Her chin is resting on his hair. Max kisses her collarbone, and her hand moves up his spine.

“You sleep?”

“Not really.”

Max frowns.

“I need to go,” Furiosa murmurs. “Find Cheedo.” A pause. “Or who took her.”

“Okay,” Max says, and doesn’t stop her.

***

It’s Wednesday. Valkyrie and Furiosa are leaving for Strathalbyn with Sis, Lily, Roman, Pearl, and four teenage girls on Thursday afternoon. Nobody has heard anything about Cheedo. And Toast, honestly, has too much on her hands right now to be turning every stone in Citadel looking for her. There are entrance fees and hauling fees and training fees and boarding fees that all need to be shuffled apart and put in order, on top of the pre-existing chaos of the daily lesson program that Toast is about to be in charge of for two and a half days. Shipments of dirt bike parts have begun to arrive, and Amí has promised to teach her how to ride one, but they’re still a few days of package-deliveries and work away from having either bike functional, so Toast can’t even look forward to that as stress relief.

When the paperwork gets to be too much, she puts Jackson in her car, drives to the diner, parks there, begs a sandwich off of Capable, then spends most of an hour wandering the streets while the Rottweiler sniffs along behind her. The sweat evaporates off her skin so fast that she never gets damp. There isn’t a trace of runaway teenager to be found. They go back to the barn to find Nahi carrying Pi by the scruff of her neck while she wriggles and complains, both of them covered with dirt, so Toast grabs Furiosa in the middle of a coffee break and makes her help clean them off.

Then, more paperwork. Calling Dag to confirm lack of Cheedo updates and that everyone is sound and legal to ride in a competition. Calling various parents to re-re-confirm the hotel and when their children need to be at the barn tomorrow. Confirming the price of the hotel for the fifth time. Confirming the distance for the eighth time; yes, it’s Australia; we live in the Outback; every kind of competition is at least three hours away, this one just happens to be six. The truck is going anyway; if you really want to buy a last-second plane ticket, go ahead, but the trailer is attached to the truck and nobody is going to have time to go pick up the kid, so you might as well let them spend a couple hours with people who know how nervous they are instead of people who want to know what that weird smell is and save a lot of money.

Toast’s knuckles are sore when she hangs up for the last time. Valkyrie is wrapping up her final evening lesson in the indoor. Furiosa has already started evening feeds. Toast heads for the feed room to prep breakfast grain. By the time she’s done, Valkyrie’s lesson is finished and Fancy has been turned out to her dinner, and Valkyrie slings an arm around Toast’s shoulders and offers her a glass of wine.

Toast accepts.

***

Angharad won’t admit that she’s nervous about Valkyrie and Furiosa leaving, but Capable can see it in how she won’t stop moving her hands: picking at small cuts, pulling at her hair, touching her face again and again. So Capable offers to spend Thursday and Friday nights at the barn (and bring Nux with her, if that’s necessary/acceptable).

Amí pretends to be offended. Angharad smiles. Valkyrie tells them not to fuck in her bed. Furiosa write out instructions for feeding the dogs.

Capable has the evening shift on Thursday, so she can’t be at the barn until late, but Furiosa comes in and orders a stack of sandwiches for the road, and Capable leaves her and Max alone in the front of the diner to kiss or punch each other or do whatever they want to do. Max is tracing the knuckles of Furiosa’s prosthetic when she walks out with the sandwiches. His beard is coming in pretty well.

“Max,” Capable says when they can no longer hear Furiosa’s engine. “Why do you like her?”

He squints at her, then shrugs. “Why?”

Capable throws a shrug of her own. “I’ve never seen a couple work like you two.”

Max gets a funny look around his eyes and goes a little pink. He starts straightening the stacks of menus. “Not a couple.”

Capable balls up a napkin and throws it at him.

He dodges it, then stabs a finger at Nux when he pokes his head out of the kitchen. Nux backs out of sight.

“Whatever you want to call what you are,” Capable says, “I’ve seen worse combinations. You’re cute.”

Max balls up the napkin so he can throw it back at her.

Capable catches it, and leaves him alone.

Nux is bouncing on the balls of his feet in the kitchen. She takes his arm, kisses his cheek, then sends him to scrub the cutting boards so she can start chopping vegetables in preparation for the dinner rush.

***

Strathalbyn is an old mining town with around five thousand residents. Compared to Citadel, it is a small city. Compared to an actual small city, it is Citadel. The ‘hotel’ calls itself an inn, and it’s not wrong. Everything is a family business. The main features of the town proper are a Christian college and some memorial gardens. It’s nearing midnight before they have the horses settled and get back to the hotel. Furiosa and Valkyrie share a room, and split the girls between two. They’re up at five and at the barn by six.

Furiosa is watching Sis rocket over a cross-rail in the schooling ring when someone clears their throat behind her. Sis lands and immediately tries to double-barrel a horse that is three meters away, then gets kicked forward and onto the rail. Her chin tucks in a little. She’s quieter for the next jump.

Furiosa gets poked in the spine. She snarls “ _What_ ” and spins on the person standing behind her. Valkyrie is hovering at their shoulder with a face-splitting grin.

Mary JoBassa’s head cocks to the side. “G’day, Mum, I’m calling to tell you we’ll be coming down past you, if you’d care to pop by for a visit since you haven’t seen me in half a year. Oh, and your horse isn’t dead!”

Furiosa hugs her. She’s thinner than last time; she’s carrying an oxygen tank in a satchel. But she hugs Furiosa back.

Valkyrie squeezes her shoulder and steps past them.

“Hi, Mum,” Furiosa mumbles.

Her mother cups her head in a boney palm. “You have work here. I’ll find a sideline to cheer from. Tonight, I’ll buy dinner, and we’ll catch up. Sound fair?”

Furiosa nods.

***

It’s after sunset before they’re finished at the barn. They go out for pizza around the corner from the inn. The girls consume a tremendous amount of food in a very short time, then are turned loose to stumble back to the inn so they can collapse into food comas. The women eat a little slower.

It is not difficult to talk to her mother, but sorting out the cheerful, casual-conversation moments from the constant stress of the last few weeks is. Furiosa has spent so much time thinking about Cheedo and Angharad and Max that she has to leave a health update on Minky to Valkyrie, and most of the stories she can tell date from at least a month back. Lily’s gas colic is the most recent. Tripp threw a shoe trying to kick Gen. Capable-and-Nux are still Capable-and-Nux. Bones and his paranoia are creeping towards improvement. All of the dogs are still alive and healthy. Furiosa’s arm still works. They haven’t thought up any improvements recently.

“The last time I saw you was at Melissa’s memorial,” her mother says. “Is her house still standing? Did her daughter sell it?”

“Rented it,” Valkyrie says before Furiosa can kick her.

“Is the garden still there?”

“Recently rejuvenated, actually.”

A pair of squinting lasers trains on Furiosa. “What am I missing?”

“A few things.” Furiosa rubs at her forehead and looks at Valkyrie. “Did I chase Frajil off the property before or after the memorial?”

“It was about two days after.”

“That one I know,” her mother says. “The girl you’re trying to get away from her parents. No luck?”

“Worse.”

The story wends and winds, and Furiosa doesn’t want to bring up Max’s involvement just yet, so she gets them to the present state of Cheedo’s disappearance as fast as possible, then flips backwards in time to explain Angharad’s situation. She was still tolerating Rictus the last time Furiosa’s mother was in town: she is delighted, then enraged, then somewhat mollified by the narrative of recent events, ending with Angharad’s relocation to the barn.

She leans across the table to take Furiosa’s hand. “Have you called Nada?”

Furiosa glares at Valkyrie. “She’s not supposed to know that name.”

Valkyrie raises her eyebrows. “You know what you get if you plug ‘Special Air Service Regiment Nada’ into a search engine?” She keeps talking over Furiosa’s groan: “ _Nada_.” Then she laughs at her own joke.

“So, did you call her?”

“We needed someone long-term. She wasn’t available. A different old friend came to town.”

“Amí,” Valkyrie says helpfully, and Furiosa does kick her. “It’s not even an official codename, you whinger. And they’re retired.”

Furiosa’s mother pats her hand. “Never fear. I won’t tattle.” She has to sit up to cough: a horrible, wracking sound hidden behind her elbow. Then she clears her throat and continues as if there was no break in the conversation. “This brings us to our beloved Keeper’s garden, I believe.”

Valkyrie pulls her legs up out of Furiosa’s reach. “Pitbull cop.”

“…Yes?”

Furiosa knuckles at her eyebrow. “He works at the diner. He’s a retired fed cop. He found a puppy one night. He knows about all of what we just told you. We’ve seen each other a few times.”

“Seen each other,” her mother repeats. She cackles, then swats Valkyrie’s arm. “Your mum and I always thought you two’d get married, or whatever they say the legal definition is now.”

Valkyrie shakes her head. She smiles. “Couldn’t figure it out.”

“You can do better, anyway.”

“I’m missing an arm, not my ear canals, Mum.”

Her mother has the grace to look indignant, clinging to Valkyrie’s arm while Valkyrie snickers. “She could! She’s beautiful and strong and not the sort to lead some foolish young thing along.” She strokes Valkyrie’s shoulder. “You move down here, you’ll be hitched in under a year.”

“I’m good, thanks. The horses and dogs are an attachment, not an option.” Valkyrie glances at Furiosa. “And somebody’s got to keep you alive.”

“I keep myself alive just fine.” Furiosa yanks off another slice of pizza and jams half of it in her mouth so she doesn’t have to keep talking. It doesn’t save her.

“So, does pitbull cop have a name?”

Furiosa glares at Valkyrie. Valkyrie folds her hands under her chin and smiles back, sweet as a peach. “Do tell us his name, Fury-wury.”

She can’t attempt murder in public or flee the scene, so she mutters “Max” just loud enough to be heard over the background chatter, then stuffs the rest of the slice in her mouth.

“Maximus or Maximillan?”

Valkyrie chokes.

“Probably neither, Mum. He’s just Max.”

“She’s frustrating,” her mother complains to Valkyrie. “She was so much more open when you two were together.”

“No, she wasn’t,” Valkyrie says. “You would invite me over for dinner and then ask questions until I started laughing or she turned bright red and you could assume. Somewhat like tonight.”

Furiosa’s mother makes a tsking noise and a vague shooing motion with her hands. “You can always call me a batty old hag and tell me to fuck off, you know.” She points at Valkyrie. “I know you know that.” The finger swivels towards Furiosa. “I’m talking to _you_.”

“I know, Mum.” She licks grease off her fingertips. “I know.”

***

They’re an hour south of Adelaide; her mother starts the drive home after they finish dinner. Valkyrie wraps an arm around Furiosa’s shoulders, and Furiosa’s slings around her waist, and they walk back to the inn together.

“Sorry,” Furiosa says in front of their door. “For not… being able to make us work.”

Valkyrie punches her shoulder. “I didn’t buy a barn with you to make you radically alter your personality and suddenly fall in love with me again.” She unlocks the door and gets them inside. The first thing she does is kick her boots off. “Just like I didn’t hire Toast just so I could have a potential fuck nearby; it’d make me feel manipulative and gross.” She shrugs out of her jacket. “Worry about our horses and dogs and abused girls; I’m just horny and bored.”

Furiosa – who is really not a hugger and has already used up her tri-monthly quota on her mother tonight – hugs her. They used to make a game out of picking each other up. They probably still could. “I do love you,” she mumbles.

Valkyrie kisses Furiosa’s cheek. “I’ll drag your half-dead arse out of a canyon any day.” Then she smiles and rests her chin on Furiosa’s shoulder. “I still love you, too.”

Furiosa nods, then steps back. She looks like a road-worn wreck. Valkyrie kicks her into bed, then follows her, turns on the TV, and falls asleep watching the news with Furiosa’s head on her chest.

***

Pi’s second round of vaccinations is no more dramatic than the first. Dag is bubbly and chatty about the wedding she went to, which is better than talking about Cheedo – four days gone, no word, no sightings from any quarter – so Max nods along and grunts appreciatively at the appropriate moments. Pi’s wagging tail hits his wrist so many times it starts to go numb.

“Don’t worry,” Dag says, and Max realizes he hasn’t said anything for several minutes. “If Cheedo ran, she’ll come back or get us word. If she’s trapped, her parents will have to admit it by the time school starts, and then we can send them to rot, right?”

Max has heard too many stories of children locked in basements or sheds to believe her, but those stories all start with a kidnapping or in infancy. Parents locking up their teenage daughter isn’t the kind of thing that goes on for years. He doesn’t lie by saying “Sure.” He doesn’t say anything about the matter. He just shrugs.

Dag looks a little disappointed, but she strips off her gloves and asks if he has any questions about Pi’s health, wearing a mask of reassurance, and he has to be grateful to her for that.

***

Angharad was good about locking up her house, but she didn’t barricade her garage door. She took the spare key with her, but not all of the tools piled around her garage.

Toast taught Cheedo to pick locks almost a year ago after she missed curfew and her parents locked her out of the house. She hasn’t had to since then, and she doesn’t want to turn on a light in case someone sees her, so it takes her most of an hour, kneeling in the dark, nerves faltering, knees going numb from the cold floor, hands shaking, before she gets the door open.

The garage is only a little warmer than outside. The house is only a little warmer than the garage. Cheedo closes both doors, then fumbles and sobs her way to the guest bedroom, where she kicks off her shoes, climbs under the blankets, and falls asleep in an instant.

Angharad took most of her perishable food with her, but the water still runs out of the tap and Cheedo finds a box of crackers near their expiration date in the pantry. All closed up, the house is hot during the day and cold at night. Cheedo doesn’t turn on any of the lights. After the first day, she spends a lot of time in bed, reading through the magazines and books that Angharad left behind. When she sees people out the window she hides.

On the second day, she sees Toast and Jackson. She doesn’t hide – she sits on the bed and watches them – but they don’t see her. They keep moving along the street. Searching.

She finishes the crackers on the third day. She doesn’t want to take anything else from Angharad.

On the fifth day, she breaks. She eats a bowl of dry cereal and then curls up in bed and doesn’t move for twelve hours.

On the sixth day, she watches Valkyrie’s bike drive to the diner. On the sixth day, she goes outside.

***

Angharad moves slower than she did two or three weeks ago. The impediment visibly irritates her. She doesn’t talk about wanting the child, or naming it, or raising it. She talks about Cheedo and Dag and Toast and Capable and if they’re okay: if Cheedo is safe, if Dag is eating enough, if Toast is working too much, if Capable seems happy.

Nowadays, all any of them can talk about is Cheedo, so Valkyrie almost doesn’t register it when the diner’s door opens and she walks in: oh, yes, they’ve been talking about her, here she is.

Amí is the one who points at her. “You.”

“Cheedo,” Angharad says, and sets down a clattering handful of silverware. “ _Cheedo._ ”

Valkyrie rises. Cheedo is trembling, there are tear-tracks on her skin, and she looks like she’s about to collapse, but she clutches at Valkyrie’s jacket when she folds her arms around her, and presses her face into Valkyrie’s shoulder to cry anew.

“I’m sorry,” she’s mumbling over and over. “I’m sorry.” Her fingers spasm.

Angharad sets a hand on Cheedo’s back and strokes her hair. “Where did you go?”

Cheedo sniffles. “Your house. I – I picked the lock and ate some crackers and cereal and I’m sorry-”

Valkyrie kisses her forehead. “Hush, sweet girl. We’re not mad.”

Angharad looks like she doesn’t give a single rancid shit about the crackers. “When did you last eat?”

Cheedo hides her face in Valkyrie’s shoulder and doesn’t answer.

“Kitchen,” Angharad orders. “Get whatever you want, as much as you want.”

Cheedo doesn’t move until Valkyrie pries her fingers off her jacket and wraps an arm around her shoulders to escort her to the kitchen. She’s fumbling at her own hands when they step through the door and Capable looks up.

“Oh, _Cheedo_.” She darts around the counter, then stops and backs up two steps when Cheedo flinches. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Cheedo says. She steps out from under Valkyrie’s arm and lets Capable hug her. Something in her voice twists like a knife.

Valkyrie squeezes her shoulder. “Get some food,” she murmurs. “Come see me in the office when you’re done.” Then she slips out, over into the office, and calls Furiosa. “Cheedo just walked into the diner” is all she says.

“Eight minutes,” Furiosa tells her. She’s already yelling for Toast when she hangs up.

***

They leave the empty front of the diner in Nux and Amí’s hands and withdraw to Angharad’s office: Cheedo, Valkyrie, Furiosa, Angharad, and Capable (listening with one ear at the door in case she’s needed). They listen to Cheedo’s stuttering, stumbling story that is more emotion than actions: fear and guilt and shame and blame, layering on, until the cracks wore through the gloss that she kept painting over them.

All she has to say is “I don’t want to go back” for them to begin planning. A call is made to Dag. She talks to Cheedo alone on the phone for ten minutes while the others discuss and try not to overhear. The barn is too public to hide her. Dag is gone too much, and her home is too obvious a place to keep Cheedo without legal protection, which will take time and probably a testimony that they are not sure she will give again in sufficient detail, and may not be accepted. Angharad has no problem offering her house, on the lot next to the diner, but they’re all concerned about forcing Cheedo to live in isolation, and Angharad moving back in could be dangerous for everyone involved. The War Boys are a searchlight in the black and blue of the midnight Outback: let the light catch you and you’re gone.

Nobody calls Max, but he shows up anyway, even though it’s his day off. He must have talked to Toast, because he brings Pi with him, and she immediately darts through the crowd into Cheedo’s lap. By the time Furiosa looks at the office door again it is closed and Max is gone.

Five minutes later, Amí returns. “We got customers.”

Capable nods as she stands. “Will you send Max back here?”

Amí’s eyebrows go up and the first hint of a smartass response curls around their mouth, but then they glance at the crew of women packed into the room, and all they do is nod.

Max looks a little bemused when he reappears, but he sits on the floor at Furiosa’s knee, snags a loose pad and pen, and begins asking Cheedo questions. They start as simple, easy things: does she have any siblings? Do any members of her extended family live nearby? Cheedo strokes Pi and mostly shakes her head, but sometimes she has a longer answer.

She has scratches on her hands from climbing out her second-story bedroom window and dropping to land on a bush. She knew enough to wear jeans and a thick jumper, with lighter clothes in the backpack she brought with her. She knew Angharad’s house was empty. She went there immediately; she never tried to run further; she didn’t want to _run_ , she just wanted to _get out._ She was afraid that if she went to anyone, they would have to send her home.

Max stops writing after that last piece. He doesn’t say anything.

Cheedo wraps her arms around Pi. “If I go back, I won’t be able to leave again.”

“Of course you will,” Valkyrie starts, but she stops when Cheedo’s head-shaking becomes almost violent.

“If I go back, I’ll keep selling myself the story that it’s all okay, that all parents do that.” She chokes on her own words. “I’ll start lying to everyone again. I’ll say it’s fine. They’re just strict. They’re worried about me.”

Furiosa moves off her chair to lean against the desk next to Cheedo, palms braced against the varnished wood. Her prosthetic has a dull gleam in the light of the desk lamp. “We’ll load up the horse trailer with food and water and drive it across the entire Outback if we have to, to get away, but you never have to go back to that house again.”

Max looks at her with a strained gaze, then jerks his chin at the door. “A minute?”

Furiosa squeezes Cheedo’s shoulder before she follows him out. Capable’s in the kitchen and Amí and Nux are up front, so they wind up in the back alley, by the Dumpsters where, three weeks ago, Max heard a puppy crying.

Furiosa folds her arms over her chest. “I will drop bodies before I make her go back.”

“I know,” he says, and, somehow, she believes him. “I think you should do something.”

She waits.

Max inhales, watching her, then throws himself over the edge: “Call every one of your old friends that you can, because you’re about to piss off every War Boy in three days’ ride.”

“By calling child protection?”

He nods, then shakes his head. “Not you. Capable or Toast. Probably Toast. Has spent more time with her, hasn’t...” he gestures like a gun pointed at someone’s head. “Then you take her.”

“One,” Furiosa says. “Someone will see her.”

“Doesn’t matter if-”

“Do not talk over me.”

Max stops. His eyes widen a fraction, but then he nods and mumbles an apology, opening his hands to her.

Furiosa cocks her weight onto one hip. “Two, we don’t have room. Angharad has the guest bed; Amí’s in mine. Even if we call people in – one can probably be here in a week, the second will take longer if she answers at all, and two more may outright not be able to help – we haven’t got a bed for Cheedo, much less the rest of them.”

“I have a spare bedroom,” Max says. “And the Keeper had an air mattress stashed away.”

Furiosa blinks. “You’re saying move Angharad to your house?”

“And Amí.” He shrugs. “Dogs hear everyone who comes up the road, don’t they?

She nods. “So if anything happens with Rictus, we might be late, but we’ll come at him from behind – if he goes to the right house at all.” Max is nodding along with her, so she keeps going. “Then we can take Cheedo. If Nada comes, she won’t have a problem sharing with Amí, but we can still work out a bed for Polly if she makes it out… Do you really want to be involved with this?”

Max’s eyes go soft. He nods.

“And we’re not going to be charged with kidnapping?”

His expression gets a little wry, but he tilts his chin at the bulk of the diner. “I think you have enough testimony to be safe.”

“Okay,” Furiosa says. “Should we go tell them?”

Max gives a hiccup-y little jerk of a nod, then follows her in. She touches his chin in the hall with a skim of her fingertips, enough to pull him in for a microsecond, then brushes her mouth over his cheek.

“Let’s go pick a fight,” she breathes.

Max stretches up to kiss her again, beard soft, eyelashes fluttering, before he gestures for her to lead the way once more.


	11. Of Course

The move happens without incident. Angharad closes a few hours early so she and Amí can pack up their things, and then they relocate Cheedo into the guest room and start making shopping lists so she can have more than three sets of clothes and the laptop and book she crammed into her bag.

Furiosa drives over to Max’s house to help the process of settling in, which mainly consists of drinking beer (tea for Angharad) on the back porch and mocking Max for the slow development of the garden. He shrugs off most of it, or else throws one of Pi’s toys at the most vocal commentator so that she tackles them into distraction.

They all jump when Nahi appears out of the black, trotting up out of the garden, tongue lolling. He flops at Furiosa’s feet and wags his tail when Angharad comes over to rub his belly. When Pi gets tuckered out she curls up under his chin.

“She’s getting bigger,” Angharad says.

Max hums acknowledgment.

Furiosa pokes his shoulder with her bottle. “Gonna be a real dog soon. Remember what I said about the muzzle law?”

He nods. “I’ll get one.”

“They make ones that let them open their mouths to pant,” Angharad volunteers. “Dag will know where to get them.”

Amí grumbles something about muzzling humans instead of dogs, then yawns. “I gotta call it. Too old to be staying up this late.”

Furiosa snorts, but pats their knee when they pass by. Angharad only lasts a few more minutes, and then it’s her and Max alone on the porch with the dogs. He leans his head on her shoulder; she traces the knuckles of his hand.

“This may be the last quiet night we have for a while,” she murmurs.

Max nods.

“Maybe we should do something with it.”

Max lifts his head off her shoulder and looks at her.

She deadpans a shrug. “You know. If there was anything we could think of.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Max says.

Furiosa smiles before she kisses him.

***

Max is absolutely not about to attempt foreplay in the dark anywhere near someone who carries as many concealed weapons as Amí, so they get the dogs inside the house, and Max is closing the door to his room before he feels Furiosa’s teeth on the back of his neck. He groans.

They still have to be quiet. Furiosa is good at it. Max tries to be. He mostly wants to kiss her a lot, everywhere, and she does seem to like what he’s still hesitant to call a beard. And she’s beautiful. She lets Max nudge her against a wall to kiss her with her hand knotted up in his hair, and there’s a moment where her legs flirt with the idea of locking around his waist and making him take her full weight.

Max shakes his head and kisses the side of her throat. “Just stopped wearing the brace. Don’t want to pull it out again.”

“Fair,” she concedes, and then flips them. She’s got her hands on his ass in under ten seconds – she hasn’t even pulled off her prosthetic yet – and Max feels a laugh bubble out from somewhere under his lungs. And then she has him, all of him, fingers digging into his thighs, hips straining forwards, his arms locked around her neck, her teeth catching on his bottom lip, and then she tilts their foreheads together and just stands there, holding him.

Max’s heart is beating wild and helpless out of his chest. He chokes down the words trying to climb out of his throat.

Her fingers flex. “You okay?”

Max scrapes his nails over her scalp and kisses her so he doesn’t say something ridiculous. Furiosa hitches him up against the wall a little more, then softens, ducking down into his throat to mouth over the soft, sheltered pieces of it. Max bites at her shoulder, hand fisted in her shirt, trying to breathe. He jolts when she catches her earlobe between her teeth.

“You have condoms?”

He bought a pack a week ago in the kind of muddled, half-hopeful haze that made him feel like a capital-F Fool afterwards, and he still feels blood rush into his face when he says “In the nightstand.”

He expects Furiosa to laugh at him, or at least set him down, but she simply readjusts her grip before pulling him away from the wall. Maybe Max gasps a little. Maybe he does it again when she does lower him onto the bed and then splays her hand on his chest to knock him backwards. She finds the condoms, and then her prosthetic comes off. Then, she climbs on top of him.

Max fits one hand around the corded muscle on the back of her thigh and shudders when she leans over him, chests pressed together, cupping the back of his head and thumbing lines through his hair. He bucks up a little as he rumbles a wordless plea.

Furiosa sits back. Her shirt comes off in the kind of single, smooth motion that Max will never figure out how to do with two hands, much less one, but he doesn’t get stuck yanking off his own while Furiosa peels off her bra, and then there’s a couple square acres of fresh bare skin and she’s down over him again, and Max is powerless to do anything except kiss back and clutch at her shoulders as she works a hand between their bodies.

He’s starting to scrabble a little helplessly when she pulls up again. “Do you want to?”

Max can feel himself quivering. “Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.” The moonlight catches her smile.

She helps tug his jeans and underwear off, then strips away her own so she’s really, fully naked, here, with Max, wanting him in a way that is hopefully at least a tiny bit similar to the catastrophically terrifying way he wants her and wants to see her and hear her and know that she’s still alive and that her unstoppable force is still cutting a path across the intentions of the universe that miserable bastards like Max can find the fringe of and hold onto for dear life.

Plastic crinkles and her hand slides down him for all of a second, but then that slight heat is gone, replaced, because he is inside Furiosa.

Max loses most of the air in his lungs. He gets it back with a few lurching gasps, then lunges up to kiss her. She cradles his skull with her hand and hooks her stump around his back before she starts to rock against him.

Max’s control of his breathing goes out the window fast. He squeezes his eyes shut for a couple seconds to try to get back some semblance of composure, fails at that, and settles for sliding a hand between Furiosa’s legs to give her something else to work with. She shudders and releases a small sigh, so he nips at her collarbone and lets his beard drag over her chest, rubbing at her with every rock of her hips until they’re both starting to twitch.

There’s a ball of charged electricity sparking at the base of Max’s spine and Furiosa is starting to gasp when he hooks his free arm around her waist and bites at her throat, and her spine arches, and Max lets himself go. The world doesn’t stand still, but it feels like it should.

Furiosa’s chest is heaving when Max sits back on his elbows to look at her again. “If that left a mark I’m going to kill you.”

He shakes his head while she climbs off of him. He pitches the condom into the trash and grabs a tissue to clean himself off, then looks over at her, sprawled against his pillows, a grin already curling onto her face. He rubs at his beard.

The grin gets bigger. “Yes?”

She looks amazing when he knees between her thighs. Her hand is clutching at his hair before he’s even touched her, and he locks his fingers around her hips and holds her there, beard-burning the inside of her thighs and making her writhe, dropping one hand to give her something to ride again, until her enforced silence falters and she rasps his name, quiet and hoarse and half-strangled. Max shudders at the sound.

***

They have to take a shower, afterwards, and let the dogs in so they don’t start howling. Pi appears pretty certain that there’s a magical shower creature that is going to eat them, so they have to be quick about it. Nahi is already camped out in the middle of the bed when they get out. Furiosa makes him move to one side, then pulls Max down with her as soon as he’s turned off the bathroom light. He brushes his lips over the spot where he bit her. She kisses his hair and presses her nose into it, and sleeps.

She wakes up when Angharad and Amí leave. They lock the door behind them. Nahi has migrated onto her feet. She drops off again.

When she really, fully wakes up again, Max already has his eyes open, but he heaves a dramatic sigh when she sits up. He’s very soft and warm there in the bed. She cards a hand through his hair.

“Pretty cute for a Fool,” she says.

Max shrugs one shoulder and wriggles over so he can kiss her hip.

Furiosa hums, then swipes her thumb over his cheek. “Did you leave a mark?”

Max pulls the sheets over his head; Pi immediately assumes that he is lost and pounces on him while yipping.

Furiosa swats at the general shape of Max’s head and goes to look. There’s a bruise. A small one, but it is there: an elongated mark up the line of her neck. She pokes at it, then ambles back into the bedroom to drag the sheets off of Max. Pi loses her footing and squeals until Furiosa scoops her up, then sets her down again on top of Max’s head so she can wriggle around and beat him with her tail. Furiosa lies next to him, folding her arms on his chest and resting her chin on top of them. “I want breakfast,” she says.

Max drapes an arm over her spine and sighs.

“Now.”

He shakes his head.

Furiosa pokes his side.

“Nuh-uh,” he mumbles.

She pokes him again.

Max’s grumble makes his whole chest vibrate.

Furiosa digs her fingers into his side and wriggles them until he yells and grabs at her, and she pulls him down so they’re all tangled up together, hands on skin, eyes caught on each other: a warm pile of skin that she doesn’t want to leave.

She always has to, in the end. So she makes it last.

***

Toast makes the call on Monday morning. There has been no Missing Person report filed for Cheedo or anyone matching her description, which is enough to make the Child Abuse Report Line person suspicious of her story until Toast tells them that they literally have a videotape – with sound, bless Angharad; she was going to use the recordings to take away Rictus’ parental rights – of the girl’s father walking into the diner and informing an ex-cop that his kid was missing. After that piece, she gets asked where Cheedo is now. She tells them, but throws in a “you’ll need armed guards if you want to make her go back”. CARL person makes an uncomfortable noise when they clear their throat, then starts asking for Toast’s information and how she knows Cheedo, and if she can get “that ex-cop you mentioned” to make a report as well. Then they want details on Furiosa and Valkyrie “to determine if it’s acceptable for the child to remain with them, or if she needs to be relocated, pending our investigation,” which sounds way more promising than Toast expected, given everything. She gets assured that Families SA will be informed “promptly”. And they want to talk to Cheedo.

“I’d bet my car that her parents won’t give consent,” she says. “But she’s almost sixteen. If she wants to talk, that’s good enough, right?”

There’s a wishy-washy half-answer that implies that Cheedo’s parents should at least be informed and that, ideally, the interview would be conducted at home, but then CARL person implies that this piece is really none of Toast’s business but thank you again for reporting. Then there’s a pause. “Do her parents know where she is now?”

 _We hope not_. “No.”

“Have you given the child any expectations of action?”

“We told her we wouldn’t make her go home. We promised.”

She shouldn’t have done that, it was unwise, false hope, blah-de-blah-de-blah, thank you again, she will be updated on the situation on a need-to-know basis, because she totally doesn’t work on the property where they’re hiding Cheedo or anything.

After they hang up, Toast walks out of the office and over to the indoor, where Cheedo is sitting bareback on Tripp in shorts, legs loose around his barrel, letting him walk with only one hand holding the reins at the buckle. Furiosa is on the ground; she has Yabby working Roman at the trot, spiraling into ever-tighter circles around her in the middle of the ring, then spiraling out almost to the rail, then in again. Cheedo keeps Tripp on the rail and out of their way. Valkyrie is teaching Miss Giddy and her graddaughter outside.

Toast calls for the door before she walks in. She settles into a track next to Tripp’s inside shoulder, in front of Cheedo’s leg.

“You called CPS?” Cheedo asks. “What’d they say?”

Toast scratches Tripp’s neck under the crest of his mane. “They want to talk to you about what happened.” She raises her voice a little so Furiosa can hear her. “And they might send someone to check the place out and make sure Valkyrie and Furiosa aren’t militant separatist witch cyborgs, but they’re not gonna find anything, so get comfy, because you’re not going anywhere.”

“You’re lying,” Cheedo says like a reflex.

Toast looks up and over her shoulder to meet Cheedo’s eyes. “Nuh-uh. They’re gonna talk to Max, and they’re gonna talk to you, and they’re gonna realize we’re all telling the truth, and you’re gonna stay here or with Dag.”

Cheedo shakes her head. “Don’t believe you. Sorry.”

Toast shrugs and pats Cheedo’s calf. “Don’t be sorry. Just wait and see.”

***

Valkyrie won’t let them start the dirt bikes anywhere that might spook the horses, so Amí commissions Toast and Cheedo to help drag them through the back pasture and out the rear gate into the emptiness beyond. “Give me a minute,” they say, once they’re about a hundred meters from the fence, slipping the horned helmet onto their head. “Let me do a test run.”

The first bike coughs twice before the engine catches. Amí whoops, kicks off, and sends it hauling up the side of a hill. They hit the top, swing left, and ride the ridgeline for a minute before charging down the other side, where they pull up and kill the engine. They yank off their helmet and pull out their phone.

“Lady Fury already called,” Nada says.

“She told you about the War Boys?”

“Sí.”

“You get time off?”

“It’ll take a couple days, but it’s coming, yeah. Getting lonely without me?”

“Yeah,” Amí says. “A little bit.” They scratch at their hair. “You driving or flying?”

“Driving.”

“Wanna bring me a few things?”

Nada snorts. “Booms or no-booms?”

“Future-booms. They’re all in the garage.”

“Give me the list.”

It takes less than a minute. When they’re done, Amí kicks the bike to life again and rides it back up the hill to where Toast and Cheedo are waiting. They take a longer track for the second run; when they return they hand Toast their helmet, then pull a pair of sunglasses from their pocket to keep the dust out of their eye.

***

Max calls after he gives his own report, says that CARL will always contact Families SA within 24 hours, or sooner if they believe the case is urgent, but after that the timeline gets fuzzy. It’s hard to monitor an area that has less than half a person per square kilometer. Any social worker will have a long commute.

It’s hard to sit and wait for the gears of the system to turn, so Furiosa mucks every paddock while Valkyrie preps evening feeds, and they try to talk with Angharad about what they’re having for dinner while they throw hay and hook up grain buckets and she pads alongside them, the dogs forming a circling escort around her. Paddy sets off a chain of barking when the shadows of the dirt bike riders appear over the hill of the back paddock. They’re all grinning, laughing, knocking shoulders and elbows, grease smeared over Toast’s knuckles, Cheedo’s hair a tangled mess, and Furiosa breathes a little easier.

They order pizza. Furiosa drives to pick it up, comes back to find four of them playing hearts (Toast has gone home). Valkyrie two tricks away from shooting the moon when Angharad smacks down an eight of hearts and yanks the rug out from under her plan.

Max comes to pick up Pi but stays to watch the next hand, which sees Amí get forced to play the queen of spades against a field of lower spades and complain loudly about the _betrayal_ , how will they ever trust again, until they’ve finished the hand without taking a single other point. They look at Angharad. “I can end on this note.”

Furiosa walks Max out behind them.

“What did you do with all the guns?”

“We have a place,” she says. “Nobody’s going to find them.”

Max raises his eyebrows.

“It’s not convenient, especially if we need them fast, but it would take a lot to find them. You’d have to already know where they are. And we’ve stashed almost everything illegal except Amí’s arsenal.”

Max rolls his eyes. “Might want the legal things, too.”

“There’s the shotgun under the desk in the barn and a few knives. And there’s a pistol in the frame of my bed.”

“You said-”

She pokes his chest. “ _Almost_ everything. Are they really going to check under the beds?”

“For you, they might.” He tries to smile, then shrugs one shoulder and looks down at Pi. “Cheedo alright?”

“Seems fine. How was Angharad at work?”

Max’s mouth twitches. “Worried about everyone except herself.”

Furiosa bites at the inside of her cheek. “Sounds familiar.”

Max nods.

They say goodnight.

***

Max’s house – the Keeper’s house – is about as old as any building still standing in the Outback can be. It sighs; it creaks; it mumbles to itself and whistles along with the wind. All of the doors are thick wood – however they found the stuff around here – with heavy metal deadbolts and tight frames that squeal when they’re pulled open. The windows are almost as bad. It’s a house that’s hard to move quietly in. Even Pi is heavy enough to make some of the floorboards squeak. It’s a house that has been holding itself up for a long time, and there’s something good in the walls because of that. It’s a house that holds Angharad tight.

In the morning, she makes a bowl of oatmeal and goes to walk through the garden. Several of the boxes have bright green sprouts standing up out of the black soil. She sits on the edge of one of them.

Pi trots through the open door after Angharad and follows her to her seat. She licks a fleck of dirt off of Angharad’s shoes, sneezes, then freezes in place when a crow caws nearby. Angharad scratches her behind her ears until she relaxes. She does a tiny puppy-yawn, complete with sound effects and a second sneeze that makes Angharad laugh. Then she crawls into the cave under Angharad’s legs, her spine curled against Angharad’s heels, and goes back to sleep.

Angharad strokes her fingertips over the spot where the white fur on Pi’s face becomes gray. She has to finish her oatmeal and get out the door, but Pi doesn’t wake up when she stands up, so she has to make two trips inside, one with her empty bowl, one with a sleepy pitbull.

Pi’s close to ten kilos now; Angharad really shouldn’t be carrying her, but she’s soft and smells comforting and licks Angharad’s ear when she wakes up halfway across the porch. When Angharad sets her down, she twines a figure-eight around and between her legs like a cat.

***

Angharad knows the face of just about every person in Citadel, and she knows most of their names, but it takes a second to connect the two when a man with fresh, Joker-style scars and some kind of dodgy stitches holding his face together walks into her diner alone.

Amí’s hands drop out of Angharad’s sight in the same moment that Nux turns around and says “Josh?” in a voice that is questioning and lost and begging for directions.

“It’s Slit, now, cousin. I keep telling you.” Slit cocks his hip against the counter and smiles at Angharad. “Mrs. Moore.”

Angharad stares at her reflection in Amí’s sunglasses and stamps down the urge to cover her breasts or belly with her hands. Saliva is thick in her throat, but she doesn’t swallow.

“Mister Rictus is awfully worried about you, ma’am.”

Angharad inhales through her nose. “Where’d you get the scars?”

“Did them myself,” Slit says proudly. “Box-cutter.”

Josh and Nux ate in the diner when Angharad was still waiting tables here. Josh always wanted chips; sometimes only chips, nothing else. Josh made lots of fart jokes. Josh was a little pudgier than Nux, but they were always smiling when they were together. Josh is pretty clearly a desiccated corpse buried inside the person standing in front of Angharad.

She lets her hands rest on the counter. “Do you need something?”

Slit bobs his whole body when he nods his head. “Was asked to check on you, ma’am. Sounded like you was bloody busy with this whole diner and no one to help look after it. Rictus was wondering if you might be wanting some extra hands.” He looks down at Amí. “There something wrong with this one? Bothering you?”

“They’re fine,” Angharad says. “But if you don’t need anything, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave my customers alone and get on your way. You can give Rictus my best.”

Nux is sliding closer to the counter step-by-step, his eyes on the back of Slit’s head as Slit tilts his chin up and makes a mock-confused expression at Angharad. “That’s quite a change from the way you’ve been treating his calls.” Then he nods at her stomach. “Only a few weeks left now, aye?”

“Josh-” Nux starts.

“You need to leave,” Angharad says.

Slit shakes his head and sets both hands on the counter. “I’m supposed to ask why you aren’t answering your phone.”

“The woman said to leave,” Amí says mildly.

Slit barely glances at them. “You can’t take a man’s son away from him, you know. He’ll-” Amí grabs the pinky finger of his right hand and yanks it backwards, and Slit chokes off into a howl. He jerks his hand free and staggers backwards into Nux, who falters, but wraps his arms around Slit’s torso when he tries to lunge forwards. “You fucking-”

The knife that Amí yanks out is so big that even Angharad takes a step backwards. They rest the edge of the blade against the inside of Slit’s thigh without stooping. “If I cut you here, you’re going to bleed a lot and die very fast.”

The three occupied tables empty in a heartbeat as people flee into the parking lot. Capable sticks her head out of the kitchen and freezes. “Josh?”

“It’s fucking _Slit_ you little-“ The knife twitches, and Slit cuts himself off. There’s a snarl taking over his face. “You’re going to pay for this.” He seems to say it to no one in particular, but both Nux and Capable look towards Angharad.

“Just get him out of here,” she mumbles.

Amí pulls off their sunglasses and jerks their chin at Nux. “Get his arms.”

Slit doesn’t move beyond quivering with rage as Nux adjusts his grip and pulls his arms up tight against his back. When Amí taps the knife against his thigh, he flinches.

“Here’s the deal. You’re going to walk out of here with a sprained finger, and you’re going to consider yourself very lucky that that’s the full extent of your damage. You are going to tell your buddies that everything in Citadel is just dandy and it’s a really bad idea to bother this lovely lady any more. If you come back, you will wind up hog-tied under a tarp in the bed of my truck, and I will drive us into the middle of the Outback and break every single bone in your body, one at a time, before I leave you for the lizards and flies. Am I fucking understood, white boy?”

Slit’s entire face scrunches up, and he bares his teeth and spits at Amí.

They flip the knife around and jam the hilt into his crotch so that he screams again, louder than before. “I wasn’t asking for opinions.”

“Get him out of here,” Angharad repeats. “Please.”

Amí nods at Nux.

Slit cranes his head around as Nux muscles him towards the door. “Traitor,” he hisses at Nux. “Traitors, you  and her.” He spits in Angharad’s direction, so Amí backhands him as he looks forwards again. They hold the door open for Nux and watch him shove Slit across the parking lot, then yank it shut and lock the deadbolt as soon as he’s inside once more. They’re dialing their phone before Capable has reached Angharad’s side.

“Hey,” they say. “Any chance you can start driving tonight?”

The voice on the other end is tinny and faint, but still audible if Angharad listens hard: “Tell Lady Fury to start calling in backup.”


	12. The Nail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay; college has resumed with much mayhem and way too many readings by old dead white guys. Have some ponies.

Families SA is taking their sweet time getting out to Citadel, so when Angharad calls the barn with her voice shaking so hard it sounds like she’s about to drop the phone, Toast finds herself skewered at a crossroads. Everything they – this patched-together pseudo-family of people on the run – can do puts someone in danger, except possibly sending Cheedo to Dag, which blows a fat hole in Toast’s report to Child Services. But if Families SA shows up in the middle of an armed showdown of Rictus and his cronies against whomever Valkyrie and Furiosa can scrounge out of the dirt, everyone is going to get arrested, and Cheedo and Angharad will be stranded alone in Citadel with blood in the water and a lot of vengeful War Boy sharks circling.

Toast paces a hole in the floor until Valkyrie sticks her head into the office to check what she wants for lunch. Then she tells Valkyrie about the call. Then Valkyrie sits on the floor in the middle of the office and puts her head between her knees and doesn’t move from that position for an uncomfortably long time.

Eventually, Toast sits next to her.

Valkyrie has her arms wrapped around her legs, so her voice is muffled when she speaks: “You know the story of Furiosa’s arm?”

Toast shrugs even though Valkyrie can’t see her. “I heard a version from Capable.”

Valkyrie is quiet for a while.

“Are you okay?”

Valkyrie picks her head up so she can nod. She takes a deep breath with her eyes closed. “Furiosa lost her arm and cracked her skull. Amí had their back and their eye. Then another one of us – Polly – stepped on a land mine. She lost her left leg.” She rubs her knuckles over her mouth and opens her eyes. “Then Nada got her throat cut open by a hunk of shrapnel. She only lived because we were in the middle of a city, practically standing in front of a hospital that still had some staff and equipment.” She breathes. “That deployment was the end of me and the military. I don’t know why Nada went back.”

Toast waits.

The tendons are glaring out of Valkyrie’s hands when she holds them out in front of her. “It’s not the death. It’s the _maybe_. It’s the two millimeters that could have killed them. It’s the judgment call that put us on that road in the first place.” The hands shake, and then they lower. “I’m so fucking tired of war zones, Toast. And now there’s another one ripping towards us.”

Toast clears her throat. “So what do we do?”

Valkyrie snorts and shakes her head. “You got any ideas?”

“Take Cheedo and Angharad and run?”

“Leave the horses? And throw in some kidnapping charges?”

Toast shakes her head. “I’ll stay. Me, Dag, Capable. Families SA shows up, we tell the truth. Citadel’s a war zone. You took Cheedo on a road trip. Go camp for a couple days.”

“They have to be able to track us,” Valkyrie says, and she isn’t talking about Families SA. “Or you have to tell them where we’re going, or they’ll come back and hurt you.” She scowls. “Or we wait until they’re on top of us, so they won’t even need to ask.”

“They can’t kill me,” Toast says. “Murder charges don’t go away.”

Valkyrie looks at her. “There’s plenty of ways to hurt a person without killing.”

Toast glances around the office, at the plaster and wood holding up the roof, then out the window at the tinder-ready grass that surrounds them. “We’ve still got at least a day before your reinforcements show up; we can figure out fine details then. But can we agree right now that Cheedo and Angharad need to get out?”

Valkyrie nods.

***

Max doesn’t have a lot to say once he gets to the diner. Capable hasn’t left. Maddie brought a shotgun in and has it stashed in the kitchen. Amí’s quiet. Nux is quieter. Angharad is quietest. The six of them sit in a line at the counter, shoulder-to-shoulder, arms braced on the countertop, heads bowed or staring straight ahead.

“I have to leave,” Angharad say. “Or they’ll come back and hurt all of you.”

“Let them try,” Amí mutters.

Capable folds her fingers together. “We’ll find somewhere to hide you.”

Nux nods. “There’s the whole Outback,” he offers.

Maddie pokes Angharad’s shoulder. “Where you go, you take Cheedo. Get her out.”

“They’ll look for her.”

“Hide well.”

“Furiosa,” Max says, then lapses into silence again.

“She’ll drive until you’re safe,” Capable says. “Valkyrie probably already has a plan on where to go.” She takes Nux’s hand and looks at Maddie, then at Max. “We can hold down the diner. I’ll help Toast with the barn. If you need to go, go.”

Angharad nods, turns on her stool and wraps her arms around Capable, both of them careful of her belly. “Please stay safe,” she mumbles into Capable’s shoulder. “Please.”

***

Furiosa, being the kind of person who is accustomed to waiting the same way pigs are accustomed to flying, has detailed travel plans for three different people she hasn’t seen for two to twelve years within an hour of being updated on the situation, and then spends the rest of the day trying to get those three people to actually follow those plans and show up in a reasonable amount of time.

Dixie and Kero are easy. Valkyrie’s met them once or twice. They like big trucks and big spaces and big dogs, so the horses weren’t too much of a stretch. Polly is the one that’s hard to catch. Furiosa works her way through a list of dead phone numbers and half the people in the armed forces who owe her favors before she catches wind of a burner in Brizzy that six people know the number of.

There’s no answer. A robot tells them to leave a voicemail.

“War Boys. Soon. Town’s called Citadel. You’ll be looking for Toast.” She leaves it at that.

“Think she’ll show?” Valkyrie asks.

“I’m not leaving Toast otherwise.” Furiosa puts the phone down and rubs at her hair. “We’ll know soon.”

***

Wednesday morning, Furiosa is riding in the space between the outdoor ring the road when Max and Pi pull up. She’s on Pearl: a stack of legs and bunched muscle, moving like a machine. Valkyrie’s perched on the rail of the arena, facing out, counting strides under her breath as they move between jumps. Toast is grazing Buster The Pony while eating a sandwich, and Cheedo is sitting on the ground and scratching Pee-Wee’s back while he sniffs at her boots. She opens her arms and lets Pi bound into her lap. Jackson slobbers on Max’s jeans to say hello. Rei is asleep in the shadow of the arena fence.

“Families SA?” Max asks.

“Jack shit,” Toast answers through a mouthful of bread. “How’s the garden doing?”

“It’s alive.”

“Long,” Valkyrie says, and Max turns his head to catch Pearl rising into the air two meters out from a wooden box painted to look like bricks, Furiosa’s torso perpendicular to the line of her back, already moving in to get her weight up and out of Pearl’s way, trying to adjust fractions of a second late.

Pearl’s hind foot catches the front rim of the box and rocks it on its base, but doesn’t topple it, and she lands clean with Furiosa already recollecting and sitting back to balance her. Time judders a little as Max starts to breathe again, then watches Pearl take her next stride, lose her footing, and go to her knees.

Toast is at the beginning of a harsh gasp when Furiosa, chained with leather and metal to Pearl’s face, falls.

***

It must be a rock or a slick patch of ground that Pearl hits, because Furiosa feels her balance shift before she goes down, and then the straps holding Furiosa’s prosthetic onto her body are pitted against the fifty kilos of Pearl’s head and neck that are falling downwards, and she can’t unhook herself in that half-second between the slip and Pearl’s knees crashing into the dirt, when the concussive force radiating upwards throws her onto Pearl’s neck.

Furiosa kicks her feet out of the stirrups and lets herself roll to the left before her shoulder gets wrenched up and to the side as Pearl fear-snorts and thrashes back to her feet. She tries to rear.

There’s dirt in Furiosa’s eyes and mouth and not a whole lot of air in her lungs. She says “Whoa, whoa” between choking and fumbles her way around her prosthetic as Pearl shakes her head violently while trying to back away from her. The dirt grates and scrapes against her back until her flesh-and-bone fingers find the joints of her metal ones and the chain links hooked around them, and she calls Pearl’s name to startle her into freezing long enough to yank her hand free.

Pearl bolts uphill, clears the fence of the arena with more than a meter of spread, thunders across the sand, and hops the fence on the other side so she has on open track back to her paddock. Her reins are flapping and loose, but they don’t get tangled in her legs, and she slows to a trot when she sees the rest of the horses napping in the sun or grazing without terror. As soon as some of the panic goes out of her motions and it looks like her running is done, Furiosa lets her head drop against the ground and stares at the sky.

She tries to take stock. She landed on her left shoulder before Pearl started dragging her around, so it’s not surprising that it hurts worse than anything. She’s had the wind knocked out of her. There’s enough adrenaline in her system to power a mack truck. Her helmet seems to be intact and she can remember her name, her birthday, the day of the week, Malcolm Turnbull’s name, and that Donald Trump is running for President in the United States, so she probably doesn’t have a concussion. And she can hear several people yelling her name.

“I’m fine,” she says, and uses her right arm to sit up. “I’m okay.”

Max is here – she saw him just before. He’s a few steps behind Toast and Valkyrie. Cheedo is going after Pearl with Buster and Pee-Wee’s leads in her hands, walking slow, calling Pearl’s name.

The dogs beat the humans and begin sniffing her all over immediately, and even Nahi and Paddy have come wheeling around the side of the barn by the time Valkyrie is cupping Furiosa’s face in her hands.

“I’m _fine_ ,” she says before Valkyrie can get a word out. “Furiosa JoBassa. Valkyrie Gale. Wednesday. 2015. We have a barn with too many horses and dogs. I just got dumped off a six-year-old OTTB named Pearl. Does Cheedo have her?”

“I’m more worried about your shoulder,” Valkyrie mutters at the same time that Toast crouches next to her and Paddy overshoots their position by several strides and has to circle back around.

Max, the only one still standing, catches Furiosa’s eyes and looks over his shoulder. “She’s got her.”

Furiosa nods. She winces when she tries to shift her left arm. Fear bubbles into her throat as she pulls her knees up and lifts her hands slowly until she can lace her meat fingers through her metal ones and grip tight. She pushes her knees forwards while she tries to lean backwards and takes a shuddering breath once she feels the joint of her shoulder slip back into its socket. Relief smacks into her brain like a shotgun blast.

“Was that what I think it was?” Toast mumbles.

“Dislocated shoulder,” Valkyrie affirms. She squeezes Furiosa’s hand, then elbows Toast. “There’s an ice pack in the freezer in the house. And I know we’ve got a sling somewhere.”

“Office,” Furiosa remembers. Air burns her throat. “With the first aid.”

Toast sprints. Valkyrie jogs. The dogs don’t know who to follow. Pi topples onto the scene as Max takes his turn to hunker next to Furiosa.

It’s a little late to be asking if she’s okay, so she’s grateful when he simply folds onto the ground beside her and takes her hand.

“That wasn’t her fault,” she says reflexively. “She didn’t wait long enough before the jump – I didn’t make her wait long enough – but that didn’t cause the fall. That was just bad luck.”

“Okay,” Max says without questioning. He kisses her knuckles, then rubs at Pi’s ears when she crawls into Furiosa’s lap. “She looks alright.”

Furiosa glances past him. There are no horses or humans in sight. Cheedo’s probably got Pearl in the barn to untack her and let Pee-Wee follow; Buster will be with them or back in his paddock. She blinks again, then shakes her head. “I don’t need to sit here. Let’s go.”

Max gathers Pi up and watches her stand. He doesn’t extend a hand to help, but he also doesn’t rise until she’s firmly on her feet and has pulled off her helmet. Her hair is damp with sweat. Adrenaline tremors are still shaking down her hands.

“Barn,” she says.

***

Pearl is still standing on all four feet when they get up there, which reaches the extent of Max’s ability to tell whether anything is wrong, so he holds Buster and Pi and tries to keep Pee-Wee out of the way, and shrugs helplessly at Valkyrie and Toast when they return with their respective medical supplies.

Furiosa hasn’t even taken her prosthetic off; when Valkyrie insists, it gets draped over Max’s shoulder for Pi to chew on, and then she goes right back to running her hand over the entire length of Pearl’s legs between rounds of watching Cheedo walk her up and down the entrance hall. Pearl’s knees are both scraped up, but there are no more stumbles, not even when they move her into the indoor ring and have her trot back and forth along the center line several times.

“Let her cool out,” Valkyrie says eventually. “We’ll keep an eye out for swelling for a day or two, but she looks fine.” She glances at Toast. “If we have to leave, we’ll get a satellite phone. Call us with anything.”

Toast nods. “Banamine?”

Valkyrie shakes her head. “Just cold-hose her knees and throw some Neosporin on. She’ll be fine.” She points at Furiosa. “You. Ice. Sling. Now.”

Furiosa scowls and takes the ice pack, holding it against her shoulder while Valkyrie works her stump into a sling. Rei sits at their feet and whines. Pi wriggles in Max’s grip; when he looks down the black shadow of Nahi is standing where Pee-Wee was thirty seconds earlier. The mini is currently tailing Pearl and her caretakers out of the ring, trotting to catch up with their longer strides.

Max is late to work.

***

He comes back when it’s pitch black outside and Furiosa’s shoulder has been iced into numbness. Pi has been asleep in her lap for most of an hour, so she has to let Valkyrie answer the door. Max makes it past her and around to the front of the couch, where he actually looks at Furiosa, then smiles, all out of his eyes. Valkyrie doesn’t follow him in.

Rei climbs onto the couch between Furiosa and Cheedo and curls his spine against her hip. She sets her hand on him.

“You done that before?” Max asks.

She nods. “Many times.”

His head cocks to the side. “Horses or fighting?”

She smiles. “First time was fighting. The rest were horses.”

Cheedo has her knees pulled up to her chest, but she rubs at Rei’s head with one hand. “It’s always your left.”

Furiosa nods, then watches Rei lift his head half a second before Paddy starts barking from the kitchen. Under the yapping she can hear an engine grumbling closer – a big one – and has just begun to shift Pi off her lap when Amí pokes their head around the corner.

“The cavalry has arrived,” they announce. “And she brought presents.” Then they bound out the door.

Furiosa hands Pi to Max before she shoves herself off the couch. They run into Angharad in front of the stairs as Paddy wheels around the corner and dodges between their knees, Jackson a step behind her, both baying their lungs out. In the driveway, Nahi is crouched at the edge of the floodlights’ glare, ears pricked forward. He watches the group exit the house, then lets his tongue loll out of his mouth and trots down to join them once he recognizes the lack of danger.

Nada’s Jeep is parked next to Furiosa’s truck, and she’s barely got both feet on the ground before Amí wraps her up. They merge together, swaying on the gravel, until the dogs accost them to begin sniffing Nada from hip to toe. Jackson tries to stand on his hind legs to put his front feet on her shoulders; Valkyrie’s shout brings him down.

“He wants you to rub his belly,” Furiosa says by way of greeting.

“He wants a kick in the nuts he doesn’t have,” Nada says, then throws her arms around Furiosa’s neck. She’s been growing her beard; she’s got the whole thing worked into a single braid that hangs down her chest. “You fuck yourself up again?”

“Fell off a horse. Just needs ice.”

Nada snorts, then socks Valkyrie’s arm when she reaches them. “You two flew into some shit, crow.”

Valkyrie hits back before she grabs Nada’s shoulder and knocks their foreheads together. “And you just dove in behind us.”

Nada nods. “True. Where these ladies at?” Her eyes land on Max, and she squints. He shuffles out of the way to reveal Cheedo and Angharad, a little slower to rush out, now hanging at the back of the crowd with the dogs. Nada looks at them for a moment, then sighs. “Hoping for someone taller?”

Angharad manages a smile. Cheedo looks less reassured, but Angharad nods at Amí when she says “Nobody watches the small person.”

“Good. I like you.” Nada points at Cheedo. “Is it the beard?”

Cheedo grips at her own biceps. “Are you trans?”

Nada shakes her head. “Nope. Just a mutant.” Her gaze flicks back to Max. “Is the white boy with the dog the pitbull cop?”

Max rolls his eyes, but he nods.

“Threat assessment?”

Max looks at Angharad and Cheedo, then back at Nada. “Expect blood.”

“I could have told you that.” Amí nudges Nada. “You bring my stuff?”

“No, I left it in the garage to be found when our house is raided after one of us gets riddled with illegal bullets two thousand clicks from home. It’s in the back seat.” She hits a button on her key fob, then nods at Valkyrie and Furiosa. “Brought you two some goodies, too. Cover your eyes, pitbull cop.”

Max makes a disgruntled noise as Nada throws open the Jeep’s trunk. She yanks two long steel cases down to the tailgate, then steps aside. Valkyrie gets there first, undoes the buckles on one case, opens it: she looks down at the SKS rifle – semi-automatic carbine, capable of piercing softer forms of body armor, so illegal Max may shit himself when he sees it – nestled in black foam within, then back up at Furiosa, and grins wide enough to mimic a demon. “If we have to fight, we might as well do it with the right guns.”

“Winchester 1892 in the other one,” Nada offers. “It’s a clone, but it’s a good one.”

“If it shoots the bad guys before their guns can shoot us, I’m happy.” Valkyrie opens the second case just to look, brushing her fingertips over the wood. “Three cheers for the government employee.”

“Fuck off,” Nada says. She peers up the length of the truck, where Amí has jammed their body into the backseat and is rustling around. “Everything there?”

“Looks like it.” Metal clicks, and then they crawl out. “I’ll do a better inventory in the morning.”

“Great. Now.” Nada rubs at her eyebrows. “I’ve been driving for most of two days, so… oh, shit, right.” She stabs a finger at their crowd. “I know where to go.”

Angharad steps closer. “Me and Cheedo, you mean?”

“Yeah.” The finger redirects towards Furiosa. “You’ll have to lead for the last stretch, though.”

Furiosa pulls her head out of the trunk and leans against the side of the Jeep. She frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“It’ll be a couple days’ drive. It’s in the middle of the fucking Outback with nobody around for hours. And you’re the only one here with a shit-stained scrap of an idea of how to get there.”

Angharad gets it before her: “The neo-Nazis with the fire-bombs,” she says, then looks straight at Amí while everyone else stares at her. “You were the one who told that story. About the tanker with the hiding spot.”

“I know _all_ the good stories.” Amí smirks. “If we can find that shithole, and if it’s still standing, we can booby-trap the perimeter and have ourselves a nice little vacation inside. Nobody but the government knows that place exists.”

“You want to stake our plan on me remembering how to get somewhere I haven’t been in almost twenty years?” Furiosa asks.

“I want to stake our plan on going somewhere that nobody knows about so we don’t get arrested or kill someone innocent,” Nada says. “I know the approximate region we’re going to. Between the four of us, we may even be able to get on the same track we took back then. But none of us were in the cab for those last few days.”

Valkyrie straightens up. “All you have to do is remember the road,” she murmurs. “Point us the right way, and it will be the only set of buildings around for ages.”

“It’s still a needle in a haystack,” Furiosa says. “One rock out of the whole Outback.” She looks over her shoulder at Cheedo. “I’ll try, but we may wind up camping in the desert.”

Cheedo shrugs. Angharad folds her hands over her stomach and lifts her chin. “I don’t want… anyone to get hurt, unless you have to.” She swallows. “And I’d rather give birth in the Outback and lose the baby than stay here and…” She stops. She looks… she looks like she means what she says.

“Can we bring the dogs?” Cheedo asks.

“Yeah,” Valkyrie says. “We’ll bring the dogs.”


	13. The Shoe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, sorry for the delay. College, for some reason, is not conducive to writing massive fics. Everyone who has stuck around has my undying love.  
> ALSO, because we live in a lovely and talented fandom, there is an excellent Fury Road fanvid set to Fight Song right here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXCbnq_ab8Y that makes me want to cry every time I watch it (which is about three times a day), and that's my only excuse for temporarily turning this fic into a musical. Go watch it.

After Valkyrie’s motorcycle, Furiosa and Amí’s utes, and Nada’s Jeep, Angharad is expecting “the truckies” to arrive in, well, trucks.

They get to the barn within twenty minutes of each other. Dixie is first in a minivan full of cat hair; Kero shows up in a hippie van that looks older than Angharad. They’re big, solid women with brutally short haircuts and mens’ clothes. Kero’s on service leave; Dixie just finished one job in Queensland and starts another in two weeks. A friend is taking care of her two cats. Both women bring shotguns. They haven’t met Nada or Amí before; they don’t know what to do with each other for a little while until Kero sees the dirt bikes and starts asking questions. Dixie’s Maori. Kero’s pretty obviously something else – she has very dark skin and very green eyes – but Angharad doesn’t ask.

Earlier, when they were finishing dinner and bickering about what to watch on TV, Cheedo mumbled something about Lilo & Stitch. They’re on the last ten minutes when everyone comes back inside: Capable and Toast are leaning against each other, and Cheedo is tucked under Dag’s arm. (She came over to say goodbye.)

It’s that stupid “this is my family” scene. The one where love magically makes it all right at the end of the day, and the galactic powers and social services step aside. _It is little and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good_. And it’s all okay.

Cheedo sniffles.

“I remember that one,” Dixie says.

Angharad folds her hands over her stomach and walks into the kitchen. Furiosa moves to follow her, but then her phone rings; she taps Valkyrie’s shoulder before she walks outside to answer it.

Angharad sits on the floor so she can pet Jackson. Valkyrie hovers near the stairs.

“When do we leave?”

Valkyrie glances over her shoulder into the living room, then comes to sit next to Angharad. Rei plods over and dumps his head in her lap. “Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Eight people.” Angharad says. “Pretty noticeable.”

Valkyrie shakes her head. “Six. Dixie and Kero will help with the diner, keep an eye on the barn.” She holds out her hand when Pi scampers around the corner, and the puppy plows her skull into her knuckles before remembering to stop running. “We’ll still have two cars: Furiosa’s and Nada’s.”

“Gasoline?”

Valkyrie starts to smile before she cuts it off and nods. “We’ll have plenty extra.”

“Right.” Angharad looks at her hands buried in Jackson’s fur. “You’ve done this before.”

“Twenty years ago.” Valkyrie reaches over to squeeze her forearm. “If we have to put you and Cheedo in one of the cars and tell you to run for civilization, we’ll do just that. The four of us have seen worse than some brats with big egos.”

“Figjams,” Angharad says.

“Figjams,” Valkyrie agrees.

“With guns.”

Valkyrie points at the wall between them and the living room, where Nada and Amí are trying to have a conversation about aliens’ concept of gender. “We didn’t call them just for the commentary, I promise.”

***

“Is Toast a real name?”

“Real as any you’ve ever heard.”

“You’re full of shit, JoBassa.”

“Are you coming?”

“Fuck off,” Polly says, and hangs up on her.

Furiosa stuffs the phone back in her pocket and watches Max’s headlights turn up the driveway. Nahi barrels past her to meet him.

The first thing Max does when he reaches her is jerk his chin towards her shoulder. “Still?”

“Val’s insisting on a week.” She plucks at one of the sling’s straps. “It’s been less than two days. I can still drive. I’ll be fine.”

Max shakes his head at her, so she whacks his arm, and he cups her elbow so he doesn’t jostle her shoulder when he kisses her. She flicks a finger against the side of his skull until he stops trying to coddle her, then hooks her good arm around his neck.

“Don’t treat me like I’m going to shatter,” she murmurs against his lips.

Max rumbles acquiescence, so she kisses him again. He folds his arms around her waist and holds her.

Inside, Valkyrie catches them. “We have more people than beds, so I’m sleeping on the couch.” She cuddles Pi in her arms and shoots a pointed glance at Furiosa. “Just be back for morning feeds.”

Max smiles when she hands him the puppy, and Furiosa kisses her cheek.

***

Furiosa won’t admit that anything hurts, but she lies on her back instead of her side when they climb into bed, and Max tucks his shoulder under her good arm as a precaution. They lie with his head on her breastbone and his thumb rubbing small circles on the side of her ribs. Her nails tickle through his hair.

Max sleeps better next to her.

***

Angharad wanted one last shift at the diner before leaving, and Amí and Nada wake up as soon as she opens her door, so she has the two of them to keep her company in the lulls of the morning bustle.

The sun isn’t all the way over the horizon when her phone rings. _Rick_ , it says, and she picks it up.

“Be careful,” Amí tells her in the fraction of a second before the line connects.

Angharad says “You’re up early” to get the first word in.

“Thinking of you,” Rictus answers, sugar-sweet. “Thought I’d drop by wherever you’re staying now.”

She watches Amí’s eye narrow. “What do you mean? I haven’t moved.”

“Really?” he says, and her spine stiffens.

“Really.”

“That’s strange.”

She waits. Amí’s hands are out of her sight. Nada casually stands up and ambles towards the front door to peer into the parking lot.

Rictus runs out of patience too fast. Angharad waits until he’s completed “you’re” and “a” and started on what may be the first syllable of “lying” before she hangs up.

“Everything alright?” Amí asks.

Angharad shakes her head.

***

They’re drinking coffee on the porch, watching Pi run laps through the garden, when Furiosa asks if he smells smoke.

Max nods, and she gets a tightened expression on her face, then sets down her mug and walks off the porch, around to the side of the house. He sees her sharp intake of breath more than he hears it, sets down his own cup hard enough to slosh coffee over the sides, whistles for Pi and is on his feet before Furiosa says “the barn” in a choked-off, already-half-dead tone that makes his hands shake.

“I’ll drive,” is all he can say, tears through the house while she bolts around the outside, doesn’t even bother to lock anything, has the engine on before his door is closed and yanks the wheel hard to the left until they’re pointed at the barn with the engine roaring.

He can already see that the column of smoke is coming from the back of the property, catches half an eyeful of Furiosa’s lips moving in silence, and takes them off the road to skirt around the rear and bring them as close as he can.

“Extinguisher in the trunk,” he tells her.

“War Boys,” she says back. There are fresh wheel-tracks tracing the property line in the dirt.

They hit the hind paddock, the one with Bustser the pony and Harley the cow-horse and two others. The big gray one – Roman. Roman. He’s bolting down the hill and out the front gate of the paddock that is swinging wide open as Furiosa vaults from the car before the wheels have stopped turning. The mares in the next paddock – Lily, Sis, Fancy – are plastered against the fence, as far away from the blaze as they can get, screaming their terror to the wind.

Furiosa hops the fence with fire extinguisher in hand. Someone is higher up on the hill, near the building where they lock the horses in at night, and it must be Valkyrie; Max can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be Valkyrie: one heat-warped figure alone in the Outback trying to choke out an inferno with a cloud of white.

From where he’s standing, Max can see a micro-shed built onto the side of the building. Climbing the fence takes longer than he wants it to, and his knee tries to crumple on the run up the hill, but there’s a third fire extinguisher in that shed, and all he has to do is yank the pin, point the nozzle at the burning grass, squeeze the handle, and not drop the thing.

The smoke makes him cry until vision is useless. He closes his eyes after that and takes tiny steps, relying on the warmth of the fire to tell him where to aim. He has to stop when the coughing shakes his hands too much and makes him dizzy. He has to kneel.

They finish without him, he realizes, once he can open his eyes again. Valkyrie crushes the last flicker with her boot. Furiosa, still in bare feet, stands in the middle of the fresh ash and spits before she starts to wipe at the tears on her cheeks. Valkyrie tosses away her extinguisher and wraps her arms around Furiosa’s shoulders. Furiosa hugs her back, chin on her shoulder, and a new stream of water traces down her face.

“Paddy woke me up,” Valkyrie is saying. “Barking like mad. I thought she just wanted to go out.” She lets go of Furiosa and looks at Max, then back at Furiosa. “We need to get them out now.”

Nux’s bike buzzes up the driveway as Furiosa nods, but Capable is the one on board. She gets all the way up to the gate of the paddock before she stops and her face falls. Her trek up the hill is a slow one. “Rictus called Angharad,” she says. “She thought something might have happened.” She folds an elbow over her mouth when she coughs.

“You see any of the horses?” Valkyrie asks weakly.

The arm lowers. “They’re all down by the cross-country jumps. Everyone’s standing.”

“Fuck.” Valkyrie rubs at her face. “Thank god.”

Max takes a deep breath before he stands. He has to lean on the fire extinguisher for the first part of the push, but he doesn’t fall over. He hobbles closer to the conversation. Valkyrie looks him up and down without comment. Her skin appears to have darkened several shades, even though she’s probably pale as a ghost under the grime. Max risks his life by pointing at her. “You should go to a hospital. Smoke inhalation.”

She doesn’t even blink. “You first.”

Max grunts. He starts to look at Furiosa, but she shakes her head.

“No hospitals. We have to go. We’ll be fine.”

“Angharad said she was already packed,” Capable offers. “I’ll go back to the diner and let her know.” She bounces on the balls of her feet for a moment, hugs Furiosa for one fast squeeze, then pivots to do the same to Valkyrie. “Please be safe.”

Valkyrie snorts. “I’ll go wake up Cheedo,” she says. She and Capable walk down the hill together.

Furiosa glances at the black bulk of Max’s car before she actually looks at him. The best word for her expression is somewhere around _wrenching_. “I’ll see you on the other side,” she murmurs.

“Other side,” Max repeats.

She nods. And then she walks away from him.

***

The cars are already loaded up; they’re making sandwiches for lunch when Angharad returns with Nada and Amí in tow, all three of them bristling. Valkyrie’s bike will take up most of the bed of Furiosa’s pickup, so they have an open trailer hitched to the back for the extra water and gasoline. All the remaining supplies will go in the back of Nada’s Jeep. Each car has its own stash of weaponry.

Toast hugs Valkyrie for a long time when it’s her turn to say goodbye. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

“Take care of the horses.”

“Drink lots of water.”

“Don’t forget to eat.”

“Did you pack dog food?”

Valkyrie nods. “Bowls and everything.” She hesitates, then squeezes Toast tighter. “Call us with anything.”

“Okay.” Toast lets her go to nod at Dixie and Kero. “I’m sure we’ll be fine with those two on hand.”

Valkyrie gets a wry look on her face. “Someone else may show up. Her name is Polly.”

“I’ll know her when I see her?”

Valkyrie nods, then smiles and pinches Toast’s cheek. “Take care of yourself, tiny wise one.”

Toast makes a disgusted noise and shoves her away so she can go say goodbye to Cheedo, who is hovering on the edge of the crowd, cuddling Pi and looking like she’s lost her nerve. Toast stands next to her and watches the barn.

The horses are confused. They see the cars and all of the people, but the trailer has not been touched and none of them are getting wrapped for a trip. The dogs at least understand that they’ll be coming along for the ride. The horses, already rattled from the fire, don’t know what to think.

“Are you going to be okay?” Cheedo asks. “Here? Alone?”

“Won’t be alone,” Toast says. “Dag. Capable. Maddie. Nux. The truckie and veteran squadron.” She touches Cheedo’s arm. “I’ll be okay. You worry about yourself. Get out of here while the window’s open, okay?”

Cheedo presses her nose into Pi’s fur. She blinks several times before a tiny noise crawls out of her throat as she tries to nod.

Toast reaches to stroke her hair. “Feel a little scared?”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Cheedo mumbles. “People don’t set fires to make you feel safe.”

Toast winces. “Yeah.” She fumbles for a toothpick and says “Wanna say bye to Pee-Wee?”

Cheedo sets Pi down. “That’d be nice.”

***

“Hey, Lady Fury,” Nada says as Furiosa is buckling on her arm for the drive, sling tucked into the glovebox. “Know the date?”

Furiosa blinks at her. “Twenty…third?”

“Yeah.” Nada  pats the door of her Jeep. “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve.”

“I’m sure that’s why they set the pasture on fire today instead of tomorrow,” Valkyrie says dryly. She’s got shotgun in Furiosa’s truck, and Cheedo’s in the back. Angharad is riding with Nada and Amí. The dogs are all crated in the truck bed, packed in around Valkyrie’s motorcycle, except for Paddy who is sprawled across Cheedo’s lap and panting cheerfully.

Nada shrugs. “I’m just saying, yeah? Not gonna be many people where we’re going.”

Furiosa slides into her seat and pulls the door shut. “Drive, Nada,” she calls.

Nada blows a raspberry and reverses straight backwards down the driveway. Furiosa has to actually turn her truck around to keep the trailer under control, and lifts her hand off the wheel to wave as they pass Toast, flanked by Dixie and Kero in front of the house. The wheels crunch down the drive.

They’re going into the Simpson Desert – the red waste that makes up the southeast corner of the Northern Territory – but the road straight north from Citadel is so bad that it’s faster to drive south first (and easier on the cars, which are going to get beat to shit before this trip is over). They’ll turn around near Port Augusta to cut a track along the west side of the Flinders Range, running north into Queensland. There are no paved roads into the desert, but the Outback Way has come into existence in the last twenty years, and with it a rutted dirt track through the desert’s northern foothills. They’ll turn south from there at some point, when it feels right, and then they’ll be on their own.

The Simpson Desert sits on top of one of the largest aquifers in the world, and the compound they’re heading for had its own system of wells, so if they can find the place they should have nothing to worry about. But they do have to find it. And hope that cattle farmers haven’t dried up the wells.

Valkyrie leans over to turn on the radio as they pick up speed onto the highway. She flicks through stations until they catch a few notes of piano and Cheedo perks up from the back. “I like that one,” she says. Valkyrie flips back fast enough to catch the first verse:

_Like a small boat on the ocean, sending big waves into motion_

Valkyrie turns up the volume.

_Like how a single word can make a heart open_

Furiosa half-remembers the song; she’s heard it on the radio at the diner a few times. She glances into the rearview to see Cheedo murmuring the words.

_I might only have one match, but I can make an explosion_

Furiosa rolls down the window to feel the wind on her face and cranks the volume loud enough to make her prosthetic vibrate when they hit the chorus. Valkyrie starts singing then, and Cheedo’s voice picks up with her for “ _take back my life song_ ”. Furiosa doesn’t know the in-between verses, but she joins the chorus the next time around, stepping on the gas to pass Nada, arm resting on the windowsill, drumming her fingers on the wheel. They’re all loud and off-key, but it feels good.

_And I don’t really care if nobody else believes_

Nada flips her off as they pass her. Valkyrie returns the gesture, then kicks her feet up on the dashboard and sings louder.

_‘Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me_

***

There has been a significant drop-off in business at the diner since short people with arsenals strapped to their torsos started hanging around all the time; even more so since they made a public spectacle of assaulting a wayward white supremacist. Max appreciates the quiet. There are still a few tourists, and more of the regulars will show up for dinner, but before then he gets a relatively uninterrupted period of stealing Nux’s crossword, re-adjusting his knee brace (it didn’t like sprinting up the hill) and reading yesterday’s newspaper while he tries to imagine what town Furiosa is driving through right now.

He didn’t really get to say goodbye. She had horses to corral; he’d left Pi alone at home. But she would come back when it was safe for Cheedo and Angharad. He’ll see her then.

“See you on the other side,” he mumbles to the stack of menus as his phone starts to ring. He doesn’t recognize the number. “Rockatansky,” he mutters, picking up a pen to flip between his fingers.

“Good,” says a soft voice on the other end. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

Max starts patting his pockets for his order pad. “And you are?”

The person on the other end laughs. “You have my dog,” they say. “She wasn’t meant for you.”

Max cocks his hip against the counter and writes down the date and time. “Who’d you toss her in a dumpster for, then?”

“I think you know,” Rictus Moore says with the kind of tone that makes Max glance at the door. “But the bi-”

“Angharad.”

Rictus stops, then continues like Max hadn’t said anything. “She doesn’t deserve it. It’s mine.” He pauses the appropriate amount of time for Max to respond, then, when he doesn’t continues with “It’s got a chip in it. And only I have the ID number.”

“You terrorize your wife,” Max murmurs. “You leave the dog in a dumpster. Fuck off.”

“My property,” Rictus declares. “Law’s on my side.”

Max holds his breath and closes his eyes until his hands stop shaking. “Angharad’s already gone.”

“Not for long.”

Max opens his eyes to look down at the pad, then writes down Rictus’ name and number, then Angharad’s, then _beat & abandoned puppy in trash_ next to _domestic abuse_ and _stalking threat_. “Why do you want the dog?”

“It’s _mine_.”

Max raises his eyebrows. “I found her weeks ago.”

Rictus really, actually, literally growls into the phone. “You _stole_ her,” he snarls, and the female pronoun makes Max pretty sure he’s not talking about Pi. He sighs as Rictus clears his throat and makes a show of collecting himself. “I’ll have an associate pick up the dog from the barn tonight. If there is… any problem… I will have to escalate my response.”

Max stays quiet until Rictus hangs up on him. He stuffs the phone back into his pocket, signs his name at the bottom of the pad, and carries it into the kitchen to find Nux and Capable standing together in front of the sink, speaking in undertones. Max clears his throat so they look at him.

Capable knows something has gone wrong immediately. Her eyes latch onto the pad in his hand. “War Boys?”

Max nods.

“Coming to Citadel?” Nux guesses.

“The barn.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

They say “Josh” together, glance at each other, then back at Max. “Do they know Angharad’s gone?” Capable asks.

“Yes.” Max holds out his pad. Nux takes it. “Pi was his. Wants her back.”

Capable yanks the pad out of Nux’s grip. “They just torched the barn this morning, what the bloody hell does he think he’s doing? Are we in a war? Does this count as terrorism?”

“It’s stalking,” Max says. He looks between them. “I need to go to the barn.”

“Go,” Nux says immediately. “I’ve got nothing tonight; I can cover you.”

Capable is quiet for a little longer, re-reading the pad. Then she reaches to touch Max’s hand. “Is this supposed to be your statement if you don’t come back?”

Max shrugs. “Might be good to have.”

Her mouth thins into a flat line. “Okay.”

***

Max does not acknowledge the existence of a speed limit the whole way back to the barn and almost takes the gate off the hinges before he realizes that it’s closed. He kills his engine, climbs the fence, and limps up the driveway, cognizant of how eerily quiet it is without the dogs to herald his arrival. Toast is sitting on a jump in the middle of the indoor ring, Pi in her lap, watching a teenager ride Pearl – no, Gen, Pearl is taller; Gen is the stocky one – around the rail. Human and puppy cock their heads to the side when Max walks in.

“War Boys are coming for her,” he says when he’s standing next to her, voice low. “For Pi. Rictus says she’s his.”

“Bull-fucking shit she’s his,” Toast grumbles under her breath. She holds Pi out. “Get her out of here.”

Max hesitates. “I was going to-”

“Stay?” Toast mocks. “You know he thinks you and Angharad…” She makes a self-explanatory gesture. “If they find you here, whether or not you give them the dog, they’ll hurt you.”

“They don’t find me-” Max cuts himself off. Someone heavy is walking up the driveway.

“Let her walk,” Toast calls to the student, and beats Max to the door of the arena. “Who the fuck are you?”

The person standing in front of the barn could use Max as a cricket bat without breaking a sweat. They’re wearing cargo shorts, and the only thing visible under the hem of their left pant-leg is gleaming metal. “Lady Fury called me. You must be the one she called Toast.”

Toast stops. “And you must be Polly.” She swats Max’s shoulder. “She’s one of the disabled murder-machine squad. I’ll be fine. Go now and you’ll catch up with them tonight.”

Max scowls. Pi whines until he realizes how tightly he’s gripping her and readjusts. She feels heavier every day. He rubs at her ears and meets Toast’s eyes. “Run if you have to.”

Toast shakes her head. “Go.”

Max limps past Polly, feels the cold calculation of her gaze strip him to his bones, and makes a stop at his house to grab Pi’s food and toys and bed before he drives out of Citadel.

***

Port Augusta is going to be the last scrap of civilization they see for a long time, so they pause there for the night at a tiny motel on the edge of town with a proprietor who takes one look at Valkyrie and Furiosa and Amí and Nada and says sure, they can have dogs in the rooms.

They order pizza for dinner, and Furiosa takes Nada’s car to pick it up so she doesn’t have to unhook the trailer from her truck. A set of headlights appears in her rearview on her way back to the motel, and pulls into the spot next to her when she parks. She throws her door open and blinks when she recognizes Max’s car. Then Max himself climbs out, a wriggling, hyperactive ball of gray fur in his arms.

“What are you doing here?”

“Rictus,” Max says quietly. “She’s his.” He clips the leash onto Pi’s harness and sets her down. “Your friend appeared.”

“Polly? Good.”

Jackson starts barking. Angharad opens the door of the room she’s sharing with Cheedo and Furiosa and gasps when she sees Max. She comes padding out in bare feet and a nightdress. “What’s going on? Why aren’t you in Citadel?” Over her shoulder, Cheedo pokes her head out of the door, Paddy visible behind her legs, also yapping.

Max gestures at Pi. “Rictus sent War Boys to the barn for her.”

Angharad stiffens. “And you… left Toast behind. For War Boys to find.” She hesitates. “Rictus must think I’m sleeping with you.”

Max shrugs one shoulder.

Furiosa yanks out her phone and dials Toast. “Are you okay?”

“We’re camping in the driveway with all of the floodlights on and a bunch of guns in plain view of the road,” Toast says around a mouthful of something. “Spent part of the afternoon practicing with rifles way out back.” She swallows. “It’ll be a long night, but whoever shows up is going to regret it.” There are voices in the background on her end. “I assume Max is there. Tell him Capable and Nux showed up. We’ve got an army, and we’re doing laps to check on the horses every twenty minutes. I’ll call you if anything interesting happens.”

Furiosa lets herself sigh, leaning against the side of the Jeep, suddenly shivering in the cold wind. “Can I talk to Polly? Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah, sure, here she is. Yo! Say words! Bye, Furiosa.”

Polly answers the phone with a belch. “What?”

“Thank you.”

Polly grunts.

“I mean it.”

“Don’t strain yourself, Lady Fury. Your friends aren’t half-bad. Don’t talk to me for another twelve years after this and you’re good.”

Furiosa realizes that Valkyrie has come out to join them as she’s putting her phone away. “They’re ready for a standoff. Capable and Nux came to be reinforcements. We’ll have an update in a little while.” She looks at Max. “Will you come with us?”

Max starts to shake his head, but Angharad answers for him:

“You have to. They’ll kill you if they find you.”

“He’s a cop; they can’t kill him,” Valkyrie says.

“They’ll drag him into the middle of the Outback and burn his bones.” Angharad’s jaw stiffens. “You can’t go back.”

Furiosa looks at Valkyrie, then touches Max’s arm. “There’s no point to you going back tonight. We already have rooms here. You can decide in the morning.”

Max crouches to rub Pi’s back. Level with everyone else’s knees, he nods.

***

Initially, Furiosa was going to sleep on the couch and give Cheedo and Angharad the beds, but with Max added to the mix the girls insist on sharing a bed. It adds a certain degree of awkwardness that Furiosa isn’t used to, but once the lights are off and everyone is under the covers it gets better. Her shoulder is stiff. Max is warm. He kisses her hair and hums when she presses her face into his spine while she lies on her good side. When she has to roll onto her back he flips over and sets his head on her shoulder, beard tickling her skin.

It’s been a long time since she had to sleep with such a tight ball of nerves in her stomach, but somewhere around midnight her phone buzzes and she realizes that she must have dropped off. It’s a picture of an unfamiliar car with its headlights blown out and someone diving back into the driver’s seat. The accompanying text reads _I told you we’d be fine._

Max makes a questioning noise, so Furiosa hands him the phone. He makes an amused noise before returning it. “Feel better?”

“A little.”

He kisses her quietly in the dark. “You should sleep. Long drive tomorrow.”

“You should too,” she whispers, tangling her fingers with his.


	14. The Horse

Toast wakes up with her face mashed into a couch cushion, somebody grinding coffee beans in the kitchen, and sunrise dripping pink and orange across the sky. She hauls her body off the couch to find Nux in charge of the coffee-grinding while Capable babysits two giant omelets on the stove. The toaster is loaded with bread and ticking merrily.

“Thanks for staying,” Toast says. She scratches at her hair and leans against the counter.

Capable smiles. “Anytime.” She jams her spatula under one of the omelets and flips it in a single motion that looks like a magic trick. “Food’s almost done. Have a seat.”

***

Max wakes up with his head tucked under Furiosa’s chin and her hand thumbing at the back of his neck. Someone is humming quietly: Angharad, sitting on the other bed, braiding Cheedo’s hair. She has a tattoo on the top of her spine that Max has never been in the position to see before, but he’s not at an angle where he can read the words. Angharad’s knuckles are knobby and swollen under her skin.

The sky outside is pink with dawn. Rei is tucked against the side of Furiosa’s legs with Pi balled up next to him. Nahi is flopped across the pillows on the other bed.

Furiosa’s voice reverberates out of her chest into Max’s head: “They were probably expecting Toast, _maybe_ Max, so they only sent Slit. Three big women with guns is a lot for any one man to chew on.”

“He used to be a sweet kid,” Angharad says. “A long time ago.” She squeezes Cheedo’s shoulder. “Got a hair-tie?”

Max tilts his chin up to look at Furiosa. “Where did you hide them?”

“Hmm?”

“The guns.”

“They brought their own,” she says.

Max shakes his head and waits.

Furiosa glances across the room at Cheedo and Angharad and sighs. “There’s a hatch under the mats of the stalls in the back paddock. Tornado cellar. People we bought the place from didn’t know about it, never went out in that field.”

Max snorts. “Built the stalls on top?”

“First thing we did.” She scratches at his scalp and looks at Cheedo and Angharad again. “If you ever need somewhere to hide once we go back, look in Buster’s stall.”

Angharad manages a smile. Cheedo hunches her shoulders. “You think we’ll need to?”

“I think there’s a lot of good reasons to have somewhere to hide,” Angharad says. She tugs on the end of the braid, then unfolds her legs and heaves herself off the bed. “I’m going to take a shower.”

Cheedo pulls the braid forward over her shoulder as she nods. She turns her whole body to look at Furiosa. “Can I take the dogs out?”

“Yeah. Rei will be fine loose, just put Nahi’s leash on.” Furiosa waits for Max to nod.  “And Pi’s harness.”

Pi perks up when she hears her name. She bounds up the bed to latch onto Max’s hand; he picks her up and sets her on Furiosa’s stomach. She huffs a little at the weight, then again when Pi uses her as a launching pad for jumping to the ground. Nahi picks his head up at the sound of Pi hitting the floor. He _ruffs_ and follows her down.

Furiosa waits until Cheedo and the dogs get out the door and they can hear the sound of rushing water from the bathroom before she asks: “You decide?”

He thumbs at her collarbone. “Didn’t bring clothes.”

“I think I’ve seen you wear two different shirts, and to my knowledge you only have one pair of jeans,” she starts, and doesn’t finish because Max groans loudly and rolls away from her. She sits up while he lies on his back, reaches to fold his hand in hers. “You’re welcome to come with us.”

Max rubs his thumb over her fingers and nods. He kisses her knuckles when she smiles.

***

They don’t stop to buy clothes – they hesitate, ducking in while the others eat breakfast and stock up on coffee at a café across the street. Furiosa makes him buy three shirts. She lets him get away with only one new pair of jeans. He buys a five-pack of boxers for twenty dollars and listens to her grumble about prices while he hunts for socks, which is the strangest kind of endearing, even as she maneuvers Pi between clothing racks to hide her from the store assistants and complains that he’s taking too long as she balances the growing bundle of cloth against her hip. Her left arm is in the sling again at Valkyrie’s insistence. She’ll take it off for the drive.

She still looks like someone a younger Max might have done something thrilling and reckless and dangerous with, and smuggling a pitbull puppy into a clothing store hardly qualifies, but then he looks through the windows and across the street to where he can clearly see Cheedo and Angharad sitting side-by-side in a corner booth, and something clicks inside his skull. Close enough.

Furiosa kisses the back of his head. “You should pay with plastic. Leave them something to track. Might send them the wrong way for a little while.”

He looks at the socks in his hands. “Think they’ve got access to that?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I do.” She doesn’t have a hand free, but she pokes him with her elbow. “Hey.”

“Hmm?”

“Breathe.”

Max raises his eyebrows at her and heaves an exaggerated sigh. Her mouth twitches, then her eyes flick past him and she sidesteps behind a mannequin, shortens her hold on Pi’s leash, and pretends to be fascinated by a display of bikinis while a store assistant zeroes in on Max to ask if he needs help finding anything. He fumbles through an exchange of no, he’s fine, yes he will ask if he wants help, and scowls over at the grin that is crinkling up Furiosa’s eyes. She actually has her teeth sunk into her lower lip to keep from laughing as she stares straight at the display without seeing it. Max glances at the retreating sales assistant, then sticks his tongue out at Furiosa.

“They’re waiting for us,” she says as soon as the coast is clear, shoving his clothes at him.

They can’t hide Pi from the cashier, whose eyebrows climb towards his hairline when he sees her, but then his eyes lock on Furiosa’s arm and he fixes an appropriately pitying smile onto his face. “Service dog?”

Furiosa’s eyebrows twitch. Max glances from her to the cashier, remembers a black night with white floodlights, a professional killer with a shotgun in her hands and two dogs behind her, and places his body between them. “Dog’s mine.”

“Oh! For what?”

Max raises his eyebrows this time, then shoves the clothes and his credit card across the counter without answering. The cashier gets a guilty expression and stops talking. By the time he’s done, Furiosa is standing in front of the building with Valkyrie, heads tipped together.

Pi yips when Max walks out. Furiosa holds out her hand. “Let’s go.”

Max glances between her and Valkyrie. Valkyrie arches one eyebrow at him before she starts swaggering back towards the café, only shooting a glance over her shoulder to confirm that they’re following her. Max takes Furiosa’s hand and squeezes. She shakes her head, then tugs him forward.

***

They have to pass through the Flinders to drive north: B83 dips around to the eastern side of the range before it cuts north through a pass, and north over dead salt lakes, and north, and north, and north.

The Flinders are a pretty place, all green trees and red dirt. There’s nothing in the sky except floating scraps of clouds that frame the sun. Furiosa drives with her stump resting on the windowsill, Max’s black beast of a car in her rearview, and Angharad stretched out in the backseat, kneading Rei’s fur with her toes.

Valkyrie points out the windshield. “Roo.”

It’s a small gray one, standing at the edge of the road, watching them approach without moving. “Don’t wreck my truck,” Furiosa tells it.

“Dixie said she’s hit one before,” Angharad says. “With a road train.”

“Anyone who drives a road train has hit more than one,” Furiosa mutters. The kangaroo tilts its head to the side as the truck nears, then turns and hops away from the road. She relaxes a little. “I’ve hit three in one trip before. Beat the hell out of the truck, even with the bull bar, but hitting one in this would total us.”

Angharad makes an unhappy noise. “How do you know them? Dixie and Kero? You didn’t see each other across a mess hall and fall in love.”

Valkyrie snorts. “That’s what _we_ did.”

Furiosa takes her hand off the wheel to flick at Valkyrie’s skull. “Some truck companies like to send out two drivers. One drives, one sleeps, and the cargo gets where it’s going faster.” Shrugging makes her shoulder twinge. “I was a woman with one arm. Couldn’t get out of having a copilot.”

“And then they fell in love,” Valkyrie snipes.

“Kero hit a roo while I was asleep and got us jackknifed in the middle of nowhere in New South Wales, and I shit myself and almost killed her,” Furiosa says without inflection.

Valkyrie hesitates. “I remember that.”

Furiosa looks over her shoulder at Angharad. “Roos always lose in fights with road trains, but the road trains don’t always win.” She sets her gaze back on the highway. “Don’t tell Amí that story.”

“That you’re cursed?” Valkyrie blocks when Furiosa goes to punch her shoulder. “Drive, woman! You’ll have no one else to blame if you wreck us.”

“Then stop giving me a reason to consider it.” Furiosa thinks about getting in one last hit, then registers the roar of an engine as Nada’s steel-gray Jeep grumbles past them. Amí’s driving. Nada hangs out the window so she can approximate something along the lines of “you’re too bloody slow” with hand gestures and yelled insults made faint by the air ripping between the cars. Max toots his horn.

Angharad slides open the rear window, jams her arm through it so that her hand is visible around Valkyrie’s bike, and flips Max off while Valkyrie does the job for Nada.

***

They’re doing a bedtime check when the world falls down. It’s fast as a snap of the fingers: Toast is walking in the gate of Pearl and Pee-Wee’s paddock with a bucket of water in each hand, and all she can see the little golden mini standing next to the stalls, no Pearl in sight. Pee-Wee has his legs braced, as if he’s thinking about running, tail swishing anxiously. When he sees Toast, he neighs like he does when they take Pearl away for a lesson: _that’s my friend – where’s she going? Why can’t I come?_

Toast can hear heavy grunting under the noise of Pee-Wee’s neigh. She drops the buckets and double-times it up to the stalls. Pearl is down in the middle of hers, shavings clinging to her fur, her breathing heavy and panting, bedding kicked every which way across the stall. She pauses when she registers Toast’s presence, then starts thrashing again.

“No,” Toast says. “No, Pearl, no. Get up, girl, come on.” She shoes Pee-Wee away from the door, then claps her hands twice. “Come on, get up, Pearl. Stand up. Please.”

Pearl snorts, but she stops rolling and lies quietly for another moment, still panting.

“Stand up. Come on. Stand up.” Toast looks over her shoulder for Capable, dragging a wheelbarrow of hay out of the barn. “Grab Pearl’s halter! I think she’s colicking!”

Capable’s posture stiffens. She drops the wheelbarrow and runs.

Pearl thrusts her front legs out as Toast turns back around; she clucks encouragement, and the mare gets her hindquarters under her and lunges to her feet. She snorts, and when Toast steps into the stall to lay a hand on her shoulder, there isn’t a single inch of her that isn’t soaked in sweat. Her sides are heaving. She ducks her head to bite at her side.

Capable’s footsteps skid to a stop next to the door. “Oh, Pearl.”

Toast holds out her hand for the halter. “Call Dag first. Then call Valkyrie.”

***

They’re taking a break to piss, let the dogs out, and refuel the cars when the satellite phone rings. Furiosa’s watching the dogs. Valkyrie answers.

 “Pearl’s colicking.” Capable’s voice is hoarse.

Valkyrie looks across the parking lot at Furiosa, leaning against the side of Max’s car, Cheedo on one side and Angharad on the other, her stump cradled in its sling, watching Max wrestle with Paddy in the dead grass at the edge of the lot. “How bad?”

“We caught her rolling, and there’s no noise in her stomach. Toast’s walking her on a lune line because she keeps trying to kick herself, and she won’t drink.” Capable swallows hard. “Dag’s on her way, said to give her Banamine.”

Valkyrie feels a nudge at her knee. She kneels, sinks her free hand into Jackson’s fur, and rests her forehead against his shoulder while she closes her eyes and rolls out the order: “Give her the Banamine, then go prep the trailer. If she’s bad, the hospital’s the best place for her to be. Listen to Dag. And call us with any news.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Painkillers, trailer,” Valkyrie repeats. “Please.”

“Okay.”

Valkyrie kills the line. When she opens her eyes, Cheedo is standing over her. She crouches next to Valkyrie to rub Jackson’s ears and asks the question with her eyes. Valkyrie sighs. “Pearl’s colicking. Dag’s on her way. They’ll tell us if anything changes.” She watches Cheedo’s movements slow. “Could just be dehydration, or a change in pressure. Thoroughbreds will colic if someone farts too close to them.”

“Or if there’s a gunfight a hundred meters away?”

Valkyrie sits all the way down on the grubby pavement. “Horses colic for a million reasons. Bad hay. Bad grain. Parasites. Last night – if it even passed for a fight – would have lasted about thirty seconds. Fireworks shows are worse. The fire would have been worse.” She looks around when she hears Furiosa’s footsteps. “Pearl’s colicking.”

Furiosa’s face doesn’t change. “They called Dag?”

“Yeah.”

Cheedo makes a small choking noise. Valkyrie opens her arms, and Cheedo buries her face in her chest. “This is my fault.”

“If you bear any responsibility at all, then at least half of it belongs to me.” Angharad has found her way over. She, too, sits on the ground without half a bother for the scum and grit. “But we didn’t make Slit go to the barn. We didn’t set the paddock on fire. We can’t blame ourselves for trying to stay alive.”

Jackson sprawls at Valkyrie’s feet. Rei has appeared next to Furiosa; she is also dropping to kneel. “Colic happens,” she says. “Like people shit and rain falls. It happens, and doesn’t care if we’re inconvenienced.”

“She could die,” Cheedo mumbles.

Valkyrie strokes her hair. “I’ve seen at least ten horses colic. Only one of them didn’t make it.” She pauses. “You can ride with us again. Capable promised to call if anything changes.”

“I’ll ride with Max,” Angharad says quietly. “I’m getting tired.”

Valkyrie looks across the parking lot again. Max is watching them. Behind him, Nada and Amí are entertaining Pi and Paddy with sticks. The stars are thick in the sky, she knows, but she can barely see them for the floodlights.

***

“What… _is_ colic?”

It takes most of an hour for Max to get the question out. It’s an hour of dark desert punctuated by intersections that pass for towns; it’s an hour of Furiosa’s taillights glaring a dull red, an hour of Pi dozing off in Angharad’s lap.

“It’s a bellyache,” she says. “Not a disease, just a symptom. But horses can’t chunder – their bodies don’t work like that. So if there’s a blockage in the intestines, or a gas buildup, or indigestion, things get painful fast. And… compared to us, it’s pretty easy for their intestines to get twisted. Need surgery to fix that.”

Max frowns. “Why can’t they throw up?”

“I don’t know. You could ask Dag. They just can’t.”

“So what do you do? Besides surgery?”

Angharad shrugs. “Walking them sometimes helps to relieve the pain, get their bowels working. Sometimes painkillers help, sometimes laxatives. If there’s a lot of gas from bad grain, the vet can insert a stomach tube and relieve the pressure. But that’s all worthless if there’s a twist.”

“And how does that happen?”

“Twisting?”

Max nods.

“It’s… relatively mobile, their intestines. Again, you’re better off asking Dag for a real answer. There’s a myth that letting the horse roll when it’s already colicking will make the intestine twist – that’s not true. But having any amount of gas or impaction makes it even more mobile, so it’s really about catching the symptoms before they’re bad enough to make the guts twist.” She strokes Pi’s head. “And sometimes it starts with the gut twist, so it’s all downhill from there.”

Max nods again.

***

Dag was way out on one of the ranches, so it takes her an hour to get to the barn. Kero and Dixie have Capable talk them through doing the rest of the feeds, and prepping the ones for the morning. Polly stands in the middle of the ring, watching Toast and Pearl walk. After half an hour, she stumps out to meet them, pats Pearl’s shoulder, takes the lead shank, and continues in Toast’s place. Pearl’s head droops lower and lower over the course of the hour; Toast took her off the lunge once she stopped trying to kick at her belly, but they can’t stop for more than a few minutes without her trying to roll again, even with the Banamine. She’s still soaked in sweat when Dag arrives. Still not drinking.

Dag’s hair is an enormous tangle of braids all bound up in each other and then collected by a single hair-tie. She doesn’t pretend to have time for Polly or Dixie or Kero; she asks Toast about Pearl’s deworming schedule and when she last had her teeth floated while she takes her temperature, then checks Pearl’s breathing and heartrate between questions about when she last ate and pooped. The mucous in Pearl’s gums is dry, dehydrated. As Dag listens at both sides of her abdomen with a stethoscope, a frown sinks deeper into her brow lines. Then she tucks the stethoscope back into her bag.

“What do you think?” Toast asks.

Dag shrugs off her jacket and shakes her head. “I need you to get her in the grooming stall and get a twitch.”

Toast swallows.

With Pearl at her normal capacity, they would have needed to sedate her before Dag stuck an arm inside her. But she has gone downhill so hard, so fast in the last hour that she stands still with Toast stroking her neck and Capable holding the twitch around her upper lip. They can hear Pee-Wee calling for her outside, but all Pearl does is flick her ears every time he starts up again.

“She’s twisted,” Dag says, before she’s even pulled her arm out. “Do you have a trailer ready?”

***

“Do you think you’ll keep her?” Angharad catches Pi’s tail between two of her fingers. “She’ll get big soon.”

“She’s already big,” Max says.

“They’ll want you to muzzle her.”

“I know.”

Angharad lets the silence grow for a few seconds. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yeah,” Max says. He’s staring straight ahead.

“Pi is too,” Angharad cracks, and he snorts. She grins. “She likes you.”

Max’s eyebrows twitch. “Which one?”

“You know,” Angharad says.

Max grunts. “No, she doesn’t.”

“Have a little faith, Max.”

“No.”

Angharad sighs. “You both worry too much.”

He grunts again.

***

The hospital is two hours away. They’re lucky it’s not four. They sedate Pearl to keep her from rolling in the trailer; Toast half-hopes she’ll poop in response to being loaded, but there’s nothing. Pee-Wee screams when he realizes that they’re leaving him behind. The trailer hooks up to Dag’s truck, Toast following in her car. They leave Dixie and Kero to hold down the fort. Polly insists on coming and nobody has the energy to argue.

“Chin up, kid,” Dixie says as they watch Dag shut the trailer door.

Toast can’t do much besides nod. She has Capable call Valkyrie again on the drive over. The volume is high enough to hear the faint crackle of Valkyrie’s voice over the distance: “We’ll be driving all night. Let us know what happens. If we have options.”

It is a very long drive in the dark, staring at the shadowed slice of Pearl visible over the top of the trailer door. The steel glares back at her headlights.

The hospital has a whole staff of people running on caffeine pills or coke or some other amphetamine, and they’re more used to cattle than horses, but they have nevertheless seen a hundred Pearls before tonight. They’ll have another one next week.

It’s past one in the morning when they arrive. Time chugs by in a blur once Pearl is out of Toast’s direct line of sight. They don’t want to do surgery if they don’t have to – it’s expensive. Expensive expensive. The kind of expensive that has Toast radiantly aware that Valkyrie has never said the words “do surgery if she needs it”, and with the kind of recovery process that would drive most eventers out of their minds: at least a month of stall rest, probably more like three, and a solid six months for total recovery.

They do an abdominal tap of the fluid around her organs and then an ultrasound that gives clear definition to what they all already suspected: Pearl’s large intestine has flipped over her spleen, and is caught between her spleen and her kidney, and her condition is deteriorating very fast. Some food may have been able to get through for a while, but now there’s so much gas and material trapped there that the spleen is also getting shoved out of position and hurting her more.

Toast tries not to listen when Dag calls Valkyrie and Furiosa to explain their options, but she catches that there are only two besides surgery. They can give her an IV of a drug that might shrink the spleen and let the colon move back to its regular position, but that option has a low success rate and will probably take too long, given how fast Pearl is declining. The other involves trying to physically move Pearl in such a way that the colon falls back into place. They take the second option.

They do it by literally rolling her, back and forth across a set of mats; a whole team of people in there with her, Pearl so sedated that she looks dead: loose, floppy, held up by her feet by some enormous crane. Eventually, Toast has to go back out into the hall and stare at the instant-coffee machine, clutching at her own arms, trying not to think of slaughterhouses and corpses. Capable stays by the window to watch. Polly leans against a wall and keeps busy with her phone, but she looks up every so often, checking on the progress.

***

Cheedo is asleep and Furiosa won’t stop driving, even though it’s been seventeen hours since they left Port Augusta. “I can’t answer the phone if I’m driving,” she says. “If I answer the phone, I’ll tell them it’s okay to do surgery. We don’t have the money for that.” She glances at Valkyrie. “And you’re the only person I’d forgive for telling them no.”

“Three months of stall rest would kill her all by itself,” Valkyrie says. “She’s six. She’s an off-track Thoroughbred. Surgery would just drag out her suffering.”

Furiosa looks back at the road. “We’d get to say goodbye.”

“We said goodbye. We just… didn’t know how long it would be.” Valkyrie sets her hand on Furiosa’s shoulder and squeezes, then lets it sit. The road rumbles under their wheels. Beyond the headlights, there are the stars that Valkyrie couldn’t see before, so many of them pale and weak. “We gave her four years.”

Furiosa’s jaw flexes. “Should have been more.”

“Should have been. Wasn’t. You should have two arms. Amí should have two eyes; Polly, two legs. You don’t.” She squeezes again, then lets her hand drop and stares back out the window.

“Toast is probably having a stroke,” Furiosa murmurs.

“Capable’s with her. And Dag. They’ll be okay.”

“They’ll be devastated.”

“They will,” Valkyrie agrees. “But they’ll be okay.”

***

Dag looks exhausted when Toast sees her again: raw and worn thin like some battered, crumpled, soaked-and-then-dried scrap of paper that’s been blowing around the streets for a week.

“We’re out of options.” Her voice is quiet. “I need to tell them.”

Toast nods and watches her walk away. Capable hasn’t move from in front of the window; she has a frozen expression and her hands are clutching each other in front of her while she stares at Pearl’s limp body. They’ve taken her off the crane, let her rest on her side. She’s still a big horse, despite everything. Toast has only ridden her a handful of times. It was like being strapped to a friendly rocket that didn’t want to do anything more than run fast and jump over things. She was great.

“She has such tiny feet,” Capable says. “She’s so huge, but she has such little feet.” She rests her palm against the window. “I always thought she should have more problems because of that. Not enough surface to spread her weight on.”

Toast doesn’t know what else to do, so she hugs Capable awkwardly from the side, lets her keep her hand on the window, but presses her face into Capable’s shoulder so she doesn’t have to look.

***

Angharad has finally dozed off when she hears Max mutter a curse. The sky is purple: they’re coming up on sunrise, and Furiosa has her hazards on and is pulling off onto the verge. Nada’s Jeep goes for another twenty meters before they’ve realized she’s stopped and pulls off as well. Max tucks his car in behind the trailer and climbs out. Angharad sets a sleeping Pi down in the footwell and follows.

Furiosa has her arms folded on top of the steering wheel and is leaning her head against them. Her shoulders are shaking. Valkyrie is on the phone. Cheedo climbs out of the backseat, tears streaming down her face, and stands there helplessly as Paddy pokes her head out of the door and whines.

“They can’t save her,” Cheedo says brokenly. “They won’t do surgery. They’re going to let her die.”

Angharad opens her arms, and Cheedo walks into them.

***

“It’s the right choice,” Dag is saying. “Even if we did surgery, she’s got a thirty, maybe forty percent chance of complete recovery. And you’re looking at ten grand for the procedure on top of everything else.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m so sorry, loves.”

Furiosa doesn’t say anything. Valkyrie manages to clear her throat. “You can make it painless, right?”

“The hospital has barbiturates – they go for the brain first. It’ll be quiet. She won’t even know.”

Furiosa lifts her head. Her eyes are red, but she isn’t crying yet. “Is she sedated?”

“She’s on the edge of coming out of it.”

“I want to talk to her. While you do it.”

‘Okay,” Dag says.

Furiosa reaches for Valkyrie’s hand. She grips it tight.

***

They let Toast and Capable go in to say goodbye. Capable holds the phone that has Furiosa and Valkyrie on the other end as she kneels next to Pearl’s head and strokes her forelock. “Pee-Wee’s going to miss you,” she murmurs. “We all will.”

Toast leans down to kiss Pearl’s cheek. She scratches her neck, high up under her mane, the itchy spot she can never reach on her own. Her tears drip to spread dark splotches across Pearl’s fur.

Pearl grunts.

“She’s going to wake up soon,” Dag says. “She may start thrashing.”

Valkyire’s voice crackles through the phone. ”Okay.” She pauses like she can see Dag kneeling at Pearl’s shoulder, and then she hiccups. “Good girl, Pearl. Good girl. We’ll miss you.”

Capable uses her free arm to fold her elbow over her face and tries not to whimper when Pearl twitches her head. Her ears shift towards the phone.

“It’s okay.” Furiosa’s voice sounds normal. She could be standing next to the grooming stall, watching a student tack up, telling them not to do the girth too tightly. “You’re going to be okay, girl.”

Dag slides the needle in. Toast’s face crumples up. Pearl blows a heavy breath towards the phone.

“You’re gonna be alright. It’s okay.”

Pearl closes her eyes. Toast reaches out to stroke her muzzle. She’s still breathing; Capable stares at the rise and fall of her enormous ribcage, the junctions with her long, long, long legs, her enormous hindquarters. Her tiny feet.

“Good horse.” When Furiosa’s voice cracks, it sounds horrible. Capable shudders and hiccups, then takes a deep breath as Furiosa continues through a fog: “Good mare. You’re such a good mare. I…” She stops.

Pearl’s side sinks and doesn’t rise again. Toast takes her hand off her muzzle. Dag sets her palm against Pearl’s ribs.

“I’m so sorry,” Furiosa says.

Dag takes the phone. “She’s gone.” A pause. “It was about as quiet as any I’ve ever seen.”

Furiosa doesn’t answer. Valkyrie has to do the job for her, even though her voice is thick with tears. “Thanks, Dag.” She swallows. “Toast? Capable?”

Toast sniffles. “Yeah?”

“Go water Max’s garden in the morning. Make sure it’s still growing.”

***

Her eyes hurt and she can’t breathe properly and Furiosa looks like she wants to crawl into a ditch and die, but after a few seconds of silence Polly’s voice rasps out of the phone and makes both of them jump. “I got a tracker onto the kid’s car – the one who came by yesterday.”

They still have to run.

When neither of them says anything, Polly continues: “He just went through Bedourie.”

Valkyrie blows her nose and forces her brain to work. “We passed that sometime around one.” She looks at the clock on the dashboard. Furiosa is back in her leaning-on-the-wheel position. “Three or four hours behind us, then.”

“His car won’t be worth shit off-road, but they‘ll send some that are.”

“I know.”

“Keep driving,” Polly says. She waits a moment, then attempts humanity: “Sorry about the horse.”

“Get Toast and Capable home,” Valkyrie says. “And thanks.”

***

Furiosa doesn’t actually get out of her truck, she just opens the door and turns sideways in her seat. There are single tear-tracks down each of her cheeks, glimmering in the moonlight, while Cheedo’s face is awash in salt water. Even Valkyrie has been crying.

“You need to stop driving,” she tells Furiosa. She’s walked around the front of the truck and is leaning against the hood. “It’s been too long. You haven’t slept.”

“I’m fine,” Furiosa says. She manages to look at Max. “You’ve been driving all day, too.”

Nada and Amí are standing together at the edge of their little cluster with their arms crossed and identical expressions of grim contemplation. “Easy,” Nada says. “One of us drives pitbull cop’s car. We’ve been swapping off and sleeping. He can ride in the truck.”

“It’s my car-” Max starts.

Amí doesn’t let him finish. “If there’s one thing I think I can assume about you, pittie cop, it’s that you’re going to complain about how your car gets driven by anyone else. Ride in the truck and sleep.”

Max looks at Furiosa. She meets his eyes without any change in her expression, which is focused somewhere around the end of the universe. “Fine.”

***

Valkyrie demands Furiosa take the backseat so that she can actually approximate lying down. Rei fits back in there with her, a big warm ball of heat that doesn’t understand why she won’t pet him, but realizes that there must be a good reason. She props her legs up on his back with her feet resting against the window, and he goes to sleep pretty fast. Her throat is raw and her chest hurts, but, somehow, she starts to fade out.

She’s not sure if she’s dreaming when Max and Valkyrie start talking.

“She was a good horse.”

“She was,” Valkyrie agrees.

The silence returns for a while.

Valkyrie’s voice is soft when she speaks again. “You think you’re doing something good here, pitbull cop? Coming with us?”

There’s a rustle like Max has shrugged.

“You think you’re going to find your wife out here with us? Your kid?”

Max clears his throat. “You looking for her arm inside your horses?”

Valkyrie waits for a minute before she sighs. “Just trying to figure out your moral philosophy, here.”

Max makes a questioning grunt.

“Karma. The value of redemption. That shit.”

Max shrugs again. “Does it matter?”

“That’s the question.” She lets him chew on it for a couple seconds. “We’re all dying eventually. Everything is. Sun’ll explode, Earth’ll get eaten. Look far enough out, the whole universe is going to get spread out enough that the finite amount of matter in it will run out of energy. Stars will burn out. Nebulas will use themselves up. It’ll all get cold – as cold as it can get, absolute zero – and then that’ll be it. Forever. Final energy state. Nothing left. What’s a dead horse? What’s a dead wife? What’s a war? What the fuck comes after?”

Max rumbles. “It’s what’s now.” He pauses like he’s trying to work out his own words. “Have to keep it all together somehow.”

“Even if it doesn’t matter?”

“Cheedo matters,” Max says. “Angharad matters.” He struggles through: “They matter to you, too.”

“And…” There’s another rustle: someone making a gesture. “To you?”

“Yeah,” Max says. “Yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've mentioned previously that every horse in this is based off of one I know. Pearl lived at a barn near Seattle, where I go to school. She passed away while I was home on break this summer, around when I began this story, and I didn't find out until about a month later when I returned to Seattle. It happened more or less as it did with this Pearl: large intestine flipped over the spleen, surgery not an option for multiple reasons, and the alternative options not good enough to save her. But in her case, her owner got to be there in person to say goodbye. Although her death here does have a certain degree of plot relevance, it was also very cathartic to write, and I appreciate anyone who sat through it.
> 
> I only had the privilege of riding her twice, but I knew her on the ground as a sweetheart whose primary vice was dancing on the cross-ties. Riding her was, indeed, like being strapped to a very friendly rocket that loved to run. And she was only six when she died. The whole barn misses her horrifically.
> 
> Thank you.


	15. The Rider

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short chapter, for which I apologize - college is not conducive to fic-writing, and I'm about to enter finals season, so if I don't get another one out this week there may not be an update for a while. I'm so sorry; you've all been super patient and I really, really appreciate it.

Thinking about Pearl is like having her skin ripped off. It’s like there’s a cheese grater being ground against her chest, stripping away a little more of the barrier between her heart and the outside with each pass. It hurts. And she doesn’t know what to do about it beyond crying, hunched up in her seat, Paddy whining and trying to lick her hands whenever they move. She falls asleep at some point. And then she wakes up, and it’s only a few minutes before she’s a mess of tears and snot once more.

Amí stays quiet for the first couple of hours, but when Cheedo wakes up and starts crying again, they spare her half a glance. “Never had a person die before, have you?”

Cheedo shakes her head. “Nobody close.”

Amí looks back at the road. “That’ll be worse.”

“She may as wel have been human,” Cheedo mutters. “You don’t know what horses are like.”

Amí shrugs. “Animals don’t know that they’re going. Humans do.” They pull open the center console and pry out a packet of tissues.

“How can that be worse?” Cheedo takes the packet. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” She dabs at her eyes.

“Saying goodbye is just about the worst thing you can do to a human, sometimes.” Amí says it quiet, maybe even sounds a little sad. “”Death’s coming on like a freight train, now” – that’s all they hear. Sounds like hell. Feels like hell.”

“This feels like hell,” Cheedo mutters.

Amí shrugs again. “You get to remember her happy and strong. You might get stuck imagining her fear and pain, but you didn’t have to see the real thing. You can remember her hanging out with her little friend, having a normal day. You get to treasure every memory you have of her. Your friends back home don’t get that. That make sense?”

Cheedo blows her nose. “Still hurts.”

“Didn’t say it wouldn’t.” Another shrug. “Can’t do much to fix that.”

***

“What’s yours?”

The question is hours late; the sun is well over the horizon and they’re coming up on the Northern Territory border, in that fuzzy intermediate space between the green coast and the red desert. A lot of interior Queensland is like that. Strange. Sparse.

Valkyrie downs a mouthful of water before she gets back to Max: “My what?”

“Moral philosophy.” He repeats her own words back: “Karma. The value of redemption. That shit.”

Valkyrie looks over her shoulder. Rei is stretched out on Furiosa’s chest, her arms holding him in place. She seems to be sleeping. Valkyrie turns back around. “People who do terrible things deserve to be punished. But if there’s no mechanism, or if there’s a refusal to punish them, then… the universe isn’t going to come down on top of them. There’s no fundamental law on the subject, except that they have to live with themselves. And, judging by the state of the world, most of us are getting along with ourselves just fine.”

Max is watching her. “So what’s a dead horse worth, at the end of the universe?”

“I said most of us, not all.”

Max grunts.

Valkyrie clenches her jaw, then lets it go. “I can not think about most of it,” she murmurs, staring straight ahead. “She can’t. And… that day in the mountains… it sticks. It sticks in my brain.” She chews on the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know if we’d be here right now if I hadn’t been a shithead in search of an adventure twenty years ago. But, given past events, I can’t see myself being alive if I were anywhere else right now.” She digs a stick of gum out of the cupholder. “Think you’d be here if you still had a wife and ankle-biter back home?”

“I’d be in Canberra,” Max says, and gets stuck on that for a while. Then: “It doesn’t matter.”

“Because they’re dead? Or because you’re here now?”

“Leave him alone, Val.” Furiosa opens her eyes in the rearview. She tries to move her bad shoulder and immediately flinches.

“Go back to sleep,” Valkyrie tells her reflection. “It’s barely past sunrise.”

“I can drive.”

“Maybe, but you won’t. Today’s my turn.”

Furiosa hesitates, then sighs. “We should eat soon.”

“Okay. I’ll stop at the next rest area. Go back to sleep.” Her gaze flicks to Max. He’s watching the horizon.

***

Capable drives Toast back to the barn, helps with morning feeds, collapses in an armchair for three hours, then wakes up ravenous. Toast doesn’t want to eat. Polly, Dixie, and Kero do.

“Valkyrie told us to check on the garden,” Capable says to everyone, standing in the kitchen in yesterday’s clothes with Pearl’s dry sweat on her skin. “It’ll die fast without water.”

“What kind of fool grows a garden out here?” Polly snorts.

Dixie shoots her a nasty glare that gets no response, then softens her gaze when she turns back to Capable. “It’s right down the road, innit?”

“Yeah. Less than a click.”

“Good. Nice to be useful for once.”

Kero comes with them. Polly yanks her leg off and announces that she needs to clean it. They’ve barely made it three steps outside the house when Pee-Wee starts calling. Toast’s face shutters, and Capable wraps an arm around her shoulders.

Kero squints up the driveway. “How long’s it going to take him to realize she’s gone?”

Toast swallows audibly. “Could be a while,” she says. She’s hoarse.

Dixie looks at Kero, then at Toast, then back at Kero. “You want to bring the little man?”

“Can we?”

Capable squeezes Toast’s shoulder. Her mouth twitches towards a frown. “I guess. Road’s dirt; his feet should be fine. He’ll need shade and water over there.”

“The house has a covered porch,” Capable says. “I’m sure we can figure out how to get him up three stairs.” She squeezes Toast’s shoulder, then drops her arm. “Come; let’s get his halter.”

Pee-Wee’s a little confused by being walked off of the property, but he knows Toast and Capable, and he sticks close to them as Kero and Dixie amble along behind and make intermittent exclamations about how small he is. Toast walks with one hand clutching the lead and one buried in Pee-Wee’s mane. She seems a couple degrees steadier by the time they get to Max’s house.

The garden is thirsty, but it’s still alive. The stairs are a little steep for Pee-Wee’s liking, but there’s a patch of shade along the side of the house where a couple strands of grass are trying to grow, so he’s content to retreat there when the sun gets too hot. They find one of the Keeper’s old ceramic flowerpots, plug the hole in the bottom so they can fill it with water, then leave it on the shadowy side of the shed for him. Away from the barn and the lingering smell of Pearl, he seems okay. Toast mostly sits next to him. When Capable glances around at one point, she has her face pressed into his mane and her shoulders are shaking in silence. A few minutes later she picks up a watering can and comes to help. Her eyes are dry by then; she doesn’t waste the effort in pretending to smile, but she looks like she might be another fractional step towards okay.

***

Valkyrie is settling the fuel pump back in its holder when Nada vaults onto the ute’s hood, then used that as a stepping stone up to the roof, and stands there with her feet spread wide, binoculars pressed to her face. “These War Boys fans of white and putting holes in their faces?”

“Yes.” Angharad smooths her hands over her belly. “They have some kind of paint or powder they like to put on their skin. Shirtless? Black pants?”

“White torso, can’t tell you much more than that. Looks like there’s two of them on one bike. Front one’s definitely got weird shit going on with his face. Less than three minutes out.”

“Fuck my day,” Valkyrie mutters. Furiosa has already climbed back inside the truck; she’ll be pulling her rifle out of its case. Valkyrie snaps her fingers at Angharad. “You and Cheedo: in Max’s car now. Pit cop, head west, for Alice Springs. It’s twelve hours if you’re slow.”

Max nods and goes. Furiosa doesn’t pull her head out of the truck to look.

Angharad starts to say “We’re not leaving” and gets cut off by Cheedo dragging her towards the car by her arm.

“We’ll be right behind you,” Valkyrie says.

Nada climbs off the truck. Amí appears at her side, leather coat drawn tight over their shoulders against the heat of the sun, carrying a box that they set in the trailer without comment.

They make a point of looking like they’re pulling out as a unit, but as soon as they’re in a clear line Max steps on his gas and hauls ass for the horizon. Valkyrie watches his taillights shrink while Furiosa straps on her arm.

“Shoulder?”

“I’ll make it work.”

“Are we going to kill them?”

Furiosa stills. “No witnesses.”

“We’d have to get them off the road.”

“They can’t turn around and say they’ve failed and go home.” Furiosa starts moving again. “If we let them live, we’ll just have to deal with them again later.” She cinches the last buckle. “I’ll do it.”

The motorcycle’s engine rumbles up closer behind them. Nada swings her car wide, blocking it from passing. Valkyrie watches in her side mirror as the second rider starts to make motions that look a whole lot like he’s pulling out a gun, and then Nada slams on her brakes with a screech of rubber. Valkyrie sees a flash of white over the roof before the Jeep and bike disappear from view.

Furiosa yanks open the sunroof and shoves her torso through it to look backwards. “She’s still moving.” Pause. “We’re fine.”

“How bad?”

Furiosa climbs inside again. “They tried to swerve. One flew over her, landed off the road. Other hit pavement.”

“Helmets?”

Furiosa shakes her head.

Nada toots her horn. She’s right up behind the trailer again.

Valkyrie presses down harder on the gas.

***

Cheedo doesn’t take her gaze off the rear window after they peel out off from the trucks. There wasn’t time to crate the dogs, so they just piled them all into the car: Pi and Paddy with Angharad in the front seat, and all the boys in the back with Cheedo. Max wastes a lot of gas-dollars putting as much pavement behind them as his engine can handle for the next six hours. Most of the extra petrol was in the trailer attached to Furiosa’s ute, but he does keep an extra can stashed in the boot. He almost flips a coin about using it, then asks Angharad instead.

She thinks they should stop. Cheedo does, too, in case the trucks have come close to catching up with them. Max holds the more likely truth under his tongue and turns in at the next station.

The place is called Three Ways, which has to be because of the three-way junction it’s built on, like they couldn’t think of any better descriptor for the place. The dogs wheel off to the edge of the light to empty their bladders as a pack. Mark the territory.

No headlights appear in the time it takes to fill the tank. Max takes the fastest piss of his life while Cheedo sits behind the wheel with the engine running. “It’s Christmas,” she says when he gets back. “Today’s Christmas.”

The sun is gone. Nobody around here has bothered with decorations.

“Pearl died on Christmas morning,” Cheedo says. She tries for a smile.

Max looks at Angharad. Angharad looks at Max.

Cheedo climbs out of the front seat and into the back. The dogs pack in around her. “Let’s go,” she says.

They were going west when they hit Three Ways. Now, Max turns south. The GPS says that it’s five hundred and thirty kilometers to Alice Springs.

***

Nada’s got a dent in her bumper, but there’s no structural damage. They almost make the decision to send the Jeep off ahead, since it has no trailer to slow it down, but after Amí points out that it’s more or less physically impossible for the War Boys to get to Max and the girls without passing them (unless they go off-road and risk missing their target as well as the guards) they return to their original plan. Stick together. Drive as fast as they can. Meet the girls in Alice Springs.

“It’s Christmas,” Nada informs everyone when they stop for gas in Rankin, which seems to consist of a cattle station, a truck stop, and a post office. “Merry Christmas, Lady Fury.”

Pearl’s been dead less than eighteen hours.

Valkyrie wraps a scrunchie around her hair to keep it out of her face in the blowing wind. “If you kill something on Christmas, do you automatically go to hell?”

“It’s probably gotta be some _one_ over some _thing_ ,” Amí says. “But I’m pretty sure they send you to hell for murder anyway.”

“Not if it’s in the name of the god in question,” Furiosa mutters. She perches on the edge of the trailer and rubs her shoulder.

“So then you have to ask if hells overlap, or if there’s politics about who gets which souls. Like, what’s the Roman pantheon up to nowadays? What’s Hades doing? When’s the last time someone fed Cerberus?” Nada pauses. “Hey, who do you think would win a fight, Quetzalcoatl or Ra?”

“A dragon versus a bloke with an eagle’s head – gosh, I wonder,” Valkyrie snipes.

Nada shakes her head and wags a finger. “Feathered snake who controls the wind versus the dude in charge of the sun.”

Amí rolls their eye and climbs onto the trailer next to Furiosa, ignoring the mythology debate that is getting underway by the pumps. They don’t say anything.

“Is this Ra before he got merged with Horus or after? ‘Cause Horus was in charge of the whole sky, and that kind of changes things.”

“You like that little outpost?” Amí asks. “Out in the middle of fucking nowhere?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“It’s quiet. No one around.”

“… that’s a good thing?”

“Yeah.”

Amí looks at her for a second, then shrugs. “I’d have figured you’d had enough of being alone.”

“I’d have figured you’d had enough of people who don’t know how to fix their problems.”

“Cute.” Amí rubs at their nose. “I got old and soft like you. Realized ‘knowing’ wasn’t always the part that was missing.”

“You’re older than me.”

“I’m trying to be nice.”

“You suck at it.” But Furiosa smiles when she says it.

Amí sighs and looks away. “The kid’s not taking it well. Cheedo. With the horse. I don’t think I helped.”

The smile dies fast. “What’d you say?”

Amí shrugs. “That goodbyes suck. That she’s got good last memories, and the girls back home don’t, and that’ll be something to value.”

Furiosa gets a strange look on her face, like she’s trying to find something amusing. “What’s worth more: happy memories or saying goodbye?”

“It’s Christmas,” Amí says. “Don’t do that philosophical shit to me.” They climb off the trailer. “Personally, I’d pick the happy memories, but that’s just because I fucking hate saying goodbye.”

***

Alice Springs is built around the bed of a dry river, and it’s the biggest town they’ve seen in a while. They get middle-of-the-night McDonalds and then park in the deserted lot of a supermarket across the street to let the dogs out. The highway runs behind the McDonalds, and there’s a rail yard on the other side.

Max actually has cell service for once, so he calls Furiosa.

“You’re alive,” she says with the kind of tone that makes him wonder if _she_ is. “How are they?”

“Fine. Where are you?”

“Ways out. Maybe two hours.”

Max grunts. He relays where they are, then climbs back into his car, leans the seat back, goes to sleep, and almost has a heart attack when Angharad taps his window to tell him that their escort has caught up.

He sees the dent in the Jeep’s bumper but doesn’t ask, partly because Valkyrie immediately cocks her hip against the hood of his car and says “we need to talk” in a way that makes him nervous, and even more so when Furiosa takes up a position on her flank.

Valkyrie doesn’t spare him much: “From here, we’ll be driving across the desert. We weren’t expecting a third car, so when we packed off-road tires we only brought one extra set. If we use them on your car, we’ll be spending the whole trip praying to every deity ever invented that nobody blows one, because then we’ll have to abandon that car, possibly in the middle of the damn desert.”

“You want to leave mine behind,” Max says.

“We can hide it,” Furiosa offers. “Out past the edge of town. Desert can’t do much except blow sand at it.”

“You want to leave my car behind,” Max repeats.

Valkyrie looks him dead in the eye. “We _are_ leaving your car behind.”

“My car.”

“My _truck_ is hauling the trailer,” Furiosa says, “and Nada’s is full of explosives.”

Max shuts his eyes for three whole seconds. “You know a good spot?”

“We’ll find one.”

He grunts. “Okay.”

***

In the end, they drive half a click off the highway to hide the car because Max doesn’t feel safe enough stashing it closer. Furiosa goes with him. Almost immediately south of the town, there’s an enormous ridge that runs east-west for a long, long ways. They drive along the southern side of the thing, bumping and rattling along in the dark, until Max finds a nook that fits his standards for secrecy, surrounded by scrubby trees and tucked well into the shadow of the ridge.

The others are using the time to swap out their wheels, so they have to walk back.

Furiosa isn’t wearing her arm. She carries the torch in her hand. “If you tell me you’re sorry about Pearl, I crush your bad knee and leave you out here,” she says when she hears him draw breath to speak.

Max makes a small, surprised noise. “Alright.”

“Being sorry doesn’t help her.”

“I know.”

She kicks a pebble, watches it fly out of the torch’s light. “She was always nervous. Always stressed. Could barely keep herself together until we put Pee-Wee in with her. She was built to be dangerous to herself.”

Max stuffs his hands into his pockets and grunts. Furiosa has longer legs than him, and two good knees. “How long do they live? Normally?”

“Most make twenty-five. Sturdier breeds can get to thirty pretty regularly.”

He doesn’t make her say it: “She was six.”

“Yeah, she was.”

Max studies the sky for a few steps, then points at the brightest star he can pick out against the light pollution from the town. “Fuck off, God,” he says.

Furiosa barks a noise that is trying to be a laugh. She shakes her head. “Fool.”

“Mmm.”

Furiosa stops walking. They’re still a few hundred meters from the road. She clicks off the torch, leaving them in almost complete dark. The moon is on the other side of the ridge – the edge of its shadow is a knife slice across the desert, black cutting sharp to blue and silver. Furiosa turns her face towards the sky as her night vision kicks into gear, and Max does the same. There’s too much civilization around them to see the Milky Way, but there are still constellations that can be picked out of the trillion visible speckles. Max shuffles a little closer.

“That’s half the universe out there,” Furiosa murmurs.

Max makes a quiet noise of acknowledgment.

She folds her arms over her chest. “I heard you and Val talking last night.” Her fingers dig into the end of her stump. “We have oxygen in the atmosphere – and can breathe it – by a quirk of evolution. It’s poison to older life forms. It kills us, eventually. And here we are, talking about gods and post-deaths and what happens at the end of it all, like we might change it.” She bites the inside of her cheek. “Max?”

He steps up beside her. “Hmm?”

“Thanks for coming.”

He touches her elbow with the tips of two fingers. “Sure.”

Furiosa clicks on the torch again. Max takes her elbow, grip soft, and strokes his thumb over her skin as they pick their way back towards the road.

***

Twenty-four hours after she found Pearl colicking, Toast takes Pee-Wee out of his paddock and leads him over to Gen’s. The big dark mare sniffs at him through the fence, but doesn’t pin her ears or strike out.

Toast reaches over the fence to stroke her neck. “Maybe we’ll give you a roommate,” she says. “If you can learn to play nice.” Then she leads Pee-Wee back to his paddock and shuts him in for the night.

He whickers at her when she closes the gate.

“I’m sorry, little man. I’m sorry.” She clears her throat. “We’ll try to move you tomorrow, okay? If Gen’s alright with it.”

He whickers again.

Toast wraps her arms around herself and walks back to the house. Dixie and Kero are playing cards and watching TV; Polly is already in bed. Toast walks into Valkyrie’s room, shuts the door, crawls under the covers that smell like leather and horse and reassurance, and stares at the window until the blue-black becomes a gray excuse for dawn.


	16. The Message

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an atrociously-short excuse for a chapter given how long it's been since I updated. HOWEVER, since that last update, my 84-year-old, cancer-riddled grandfather accidentally put himself in opiate withdrawal because he decided that his painkillers weren't doing enough, so they must not be doing anything (he's fine now, after a week in the hospital); my uncle had a double-lung transplant (both of these things happened in the three days before Christmas); my boyfriend's uncle died from lung cancer and his grandfather had open-heart surgery; my workaholic boyfriend himself has been having panic attacks because that's what being a grad student in the good old US of A does to you; I've applied to and been accepted into both my second major and a study abroad program in the Netherlands, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand Fallout 4 and barns have been devouring what remains of my free time.  
> These are not excuses, and it will absolutely not take me three months to update again if I have my way, but that's what's up with my life right now. (And the Fallout 4 DLCs are going to start coming out soon so... sorry in advance.) You're all lovely. <3

From Alice Springs, they go off-road. There’s one last refueling stop ten kilometers south of the ridge, and then Furiosa turns her wheels east off of the asphalt, and Nada’s Jeep follows.

Furiosa drives with the windows down and the music on too loud, prosthetic resting up on the windowsill, ignoring the burn in her shoulder. Valkyrie sits with a GPS and a map of the whole Northern Territory in her lap. They never re-crated the dogs, so Paddy and Jackson are sprawled with Cheedo in the backseat, and the other three are riding in the Jeep with the rest of the humans.

It’s a big desert. It’s hot and it’s windy, and it’s been twenty years, but Furiosa drives like she knows where she’s going.

***

Toast comes crawling into the diner in the middle of the afternoon. Nux gets her some tea and doesn’t pester her as she annihilates the crossword that he abandoned halfway through. When there’s a quiet stretch, Capable comes out with a tray of sandwiches, and the three of them pick the platter apart for most of an hour.

Nux is the one who asks about Pee-Wee.

“I put Gen on a lead and let her graze in his paddock for a while,” Toast says. “She was fine as long as he stayed where she could see him.”

“That’s good,” Capable says. She meets Toast’s eyes. “I mean it.”

***

Rockatansky has some bad fucking nightmares for someone sleeping in a moving vehicle that’s driving through the unpaved Outback. Nada doesn’t really process the first few rounds of sudden commotion from the dogs, but once Amí takes over the driving she realizes that they’re all jumping up and going berserk once every hour because the human in their midst has started flailing like they’re trying to chain him down.

“You’d think he’s fresh off a tour,” Amí mutters midway between incidents.

Nada shrugs.

Amí can’t give her a side-eye without turning their head away from the tracks of Valkyrie’s truck, but the change in the set of their jaw is enough.

“I’m probably not going to sleep so well once we get out there,” Nada says. “Between the ghosts and the bastards bearing down on us.”

Amí gives a shake of their head that’s a substitute for rolling their eye. “We’ll set up pressure sensors, rig some surprises a click out. I think I remember some perimeter spotlights.”

Nada kicks her feet onto the dashboard. “If they’re far enough back for that to make a difference.”

Amí’s face turns towards the rearview. “I don’t see any dust clouds behind us.”

It’ll have to be enough.

***

Twenty years ago, it took three days in a semitrailer with nothing but a set of coordinates from the government and a GPS that only worked when the appropriate satellites were overhead. Today, they have lighter, faster cars and technology that actually works, and nothing but fog when it comes to remembering those coordinates.

There are still towns out here: one- and two-hundred person settlements, Aboriginal communities, cattle ranches, fifty, sixty, seventy, a hundred kilometers apart. They see the buildings at the rim of the horizon sometimes. The map has names from Santa Teresa to Hale to Titjkala. They drive between scrubby hills and alongside damp riverbeds; once, they do get back on the road, south of Santa Teresa, because it’s a dirt track skirting wannabe-mountains, and it’s dark, and there’s no one around to see.

As long as they’re on the road, Furiosa lets Valkyrie drive, and sleeps, and dreams of bright sunny days in the mountains.

At dawn, they stop to let the dogs out.

“This looks like the place I broke my foot,” Valkyrie says, pushing for a conversation.

Furiosa sighs. “Yeah.”

Cheedo frowns at them. “You broke your foot?”

“In training,” Valkyrie says. “Way, way back.” She glances towards the dawn. “Guess it doesn’t matter that much.”

Furiosa kneels to cradle Jackson’s boulder of a head in her hands. “You had to walk thirty kilometers on it,” she mutters. Her shoulder pops when she scratches behind Paddy’s left ear with her flesh-and-bone fingers. “Wouldn’t let me carry you.”

Valkyrie smiles at Cheedo. “Not a step.”

***

It’s like looking for a castle. You expect big. Grand. Glorious. Horizon-defining. In the sun-blasted desert east of those names on the map, there’s not much except red and brown and yellow rock under the blue sky. There are even sand dunes, ten, twenty, thirty meters high, held up by the scrubbiest of scrub grass. They cover the horizon.

Once, they drive past a small herd of camels.

“Ferals,” Angharad says when Cheedo presses her face against the window. “They’ve probably never seen humans before.”

The second night, they stop to sleep on top of the highest dune they can find. Nada takes the first watch, sitting up on top of the Jeep. Less than an hour in, Angharad clambers up beside her, wrapped in a blanket.

“You’re not worried they’ll catch up?” Her voice is clear, nonchalant.

Nada shakes her head. “Anyone following us is probably going off our tracks; they’d have to keep to a crawl, and have some kind of light on.” She gestures at the star-spangled rim of the sky. “We’d have plenty of warning.”

Angharad nods, and some of the tension goes out of her face. “Do you think this place still exists? That it’s still standing?”

“If it isn’t, we’ll still hide in the wreckage and make them regret following us off the road.” Nada cocks her head to the side and looks at Angharad. “You know we lured them out here to kill them, right?”

Angharad stares straight ahead as she nods. “Just… if they turn around. If they leave willingly. Let them live?”

Nada sits in silence for an uncomfortably long time. “You’re gonna have to talk to Valkyrie or Fury about that.”

Angharad bites her lip, then nods. Her “goodnight” is quiet, and then she climbs off the roof, sheltering her stomach, and disappears back into the Jeep.

***

The garden helps. It’s still just brown earth in most places where they planted things, but a few spots have the first green shoots poking through, and that’s enough. They keep bringing Pee-Wee with them.

Three days after Pearl died and three days before the new year, Toast actually sleeps through the night in the manner of the overworked, over-tired, over-stressed, overly-self-loathing and wakes up feeling like a wound that’s had a gallon of infected pus drained from it. She feeds breakfast to herself and the horses, straps a saddle around Harley’s barrel, and rides over the burned grass and scrub to Max’s house with Pee-Wee’s lead rope in one hand and the reins in the other. Once there, she pulls of Harley’s bridle and ties his halter to the porch railing so he can crop grass and drink while she checks the progress of the plants against the enormous gardening book, and waters soil that’s been sucked dry by roots and the sun.

When she goes to the diner and eats everything Capable puts in front of her in between helping Nux with his crossword clues, the walls seem to stand a little taller and the windows open a little wider. There’s been no word from the north, and nothing on the news, or the internet, or in the papers, but the air doesn’t smell like smoke anymore.

“You should come ride tomorrow,” she tells Capable. “Over to the garden.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

***

They’ve stopped to let the dogs out, and Furiosa is sitting up on top of the truck fussing with a little collapsible telescope while Angharad sleeps inside, and Amí and Nada are eating vegemite sandwiches and throwing sticks for the dogs, and Max is slouched against a wheel in the shade rubbing Pi’s belly while she naps across his thighs, and Valkyrie is sitting next to him braiding Cheedo’s hair, and Cheedo lifts one pale brown arm and points across the blowing sand. “Hey… what’s that?”

The telescope clicks and rattles as it extends to its full length.

“I remember something like that.”

Valkyrie squints in the direction Cheedo is pointing: there’s a glimmer of sunlight bouncing off metal, three or four kilometers out, barely visible over the top of a dune. “That?”

Nada trots up the dune. “Find something?”

“Maybe.” Valkyrie wraps an elastic band around the end of Cheedo’s braid, pats her shoulder, then stands. Furiosa tosses her the telescope.

It’s a tower – with a bunch of radio and satellite dishes strapped to it, if Valkyrie remembers right – sprouting out of a squat compound whose bulk is hidden behind the dunes.

 Nada shields her eyes from the sun. “Is that it?”

Valkyrie hands the telescope back to Furiosa. “Give me an hour. If there’s no green flare, find somewhere else to hide.” She jumps onto the trailer and unclips the first of the straps holding her tarp-wrapped bike in place.

Amí jumps up next to her. “You are not going in there alone, missy,” they say. “Probably booby-trapped. It’ll come down on your head.”

“I’ll go,” Max says.

Valkyrie glances at him and is very glad that Angharad isn’t awake. “Bike only fits two.”

He rubs his thumb over Pi’s skull, then hands her to Cheedo. He gestures between himself and Amí. “You’re more valuable.’

Valkyrie turns her face up towards Furiosa. She’s still just sitting up there, staring at the tower, but her head turns when she feels Valkyrie’s gaze. “It’s your call,” she says.

Valkyrie shrugs. “Right, then. Pitbull cop: you’re with me.” In the corner of her vision, Nada’s shoulders relax. “Amí… make us some bombs?”

Amí snorts. “If the place doesn’t fall down after an hour, I’m coming in.”

“Fine.” The last strap comes free. Valkyrie yanks off the tarp, and then she and Amí heave the motorcycle down onto the sand. The dogs circle, sniffing anxiously. She leans down to rub Jackson behind his ears. “I’ll be back soon, big dog.”

***

There’s not much that a government can do with a compound in the middle of the desert that has no roads connecting to it and too many dunes and roving sandstorms to make setting down asphalt a worthwhile endeavor. After they arrested everyone and made sure there were no interesting weapons hidden anywhere, they slapped a padlock on the front gate and left the place to rust.

Valkyrie and Max stand outside and look at it for a minute.

“Think anyone came back?” Max says. “Left a surprise?”

“I think we’re about to find out.” Valkyrie tilts her chin up. “Needs some fresh paint.”

Max snorts.

“Hey. Pit cop.”

He grunts.

“If everything goes to shit, just get Cheedo and Angharad out. M’kay?”

“Okay.”

“Great.” She squares her shoulders, exhales, then gets a toehold on the chain-link of the gate and starts to climb.

There’s a layer of fortifications that rings the top of the walls; it passes over the gate as a sturdy walkway with holes in the underside for dropping nasty surprises on anyone trying to get through. The wind rattles through the holes. Valkyrie listens for a moment, perched on the outside of the gate, then wriggles through the space between the gate and walkway and begins to climb down the other side. She’s still two meters off the ground when she hears the padlock scream as Max snaps the mechanism open with a crowbar.

Valkyrie hangs in place and waits. Max jams his hand and wrist through the chain link and gives what remains of the padlock an underhand lob. It flies about a meter, skips once, then skids a few more centimeters across the sand.

Nothing explodes.

Valkyrie’s boots hit the dirt as Max yanks the chain off the gate, and together they haul its rusted jaws open.

Max finally looks up. “Nice.”

“You should have been here twenty years ago.”

There’s an open area within the walls, lines with bullet-riddled vehicle carcasses that weren’t worth scrapping or hauling back to civilization to fix. The tower is in the middle of the open space. Valkyrie knows the eastern wall – to her right – is full of dormitories, offices, the mess hall, and a row of rancid pit toilets. The southwest corner of the compound has a room that used to be full of electronics: ham radios, dinosaur computers that got enough power from primitive solar panels to run for a few hours a day, things like that. The armory and food storage are behind their own secondary layer of fortifications along the north wall; the western wall shields a well drilled all the way down to the Great Artesian Basin. The secondary fortifications aren’t much, just sandbag walls and a memory of the caltrops that were once layered between them.

Valkyrie points at the tech room, then at the armory. “Those got picked clean, so if there’s anything remotely interesting in them, assume explosive.”

Max nods.

A bark bounces off the walls. Valkyrie turns around to see a desert-colored streak barreling down the last sand dune. Rei slows to a trot as he passes through the gate, then stops in front of them, sides heaving, tongue lolling.

Valkyrie rubs at her nose. “If you get blown up, Fury will follow me into hell.”

“I’ll watch him,” Max says. He kneels to rub Rei’s ears. “He’s a vet, right?”

“Yeah.” Valkyrie looks over her shoulder into the compound. The sun is still high in the sky. “We’re wasting our hour.”

They took the base in the middle of dinner, but desert animals have picked the mess hall clean, and any mold that might have tried to grow was wiped out by a couple decades of extreme temperatures and dry winds. The dorms and armory are the only two-story buildings in the compound, and the walls are all level with their rooftops, with more fortifications on top. Almost everything is built from cinderblocks; whatever cheap plaster shit they used for the second floor of the dorms has collapsed under all the heavy cabinets and desks the officers were keeping up there. They don’t bother trying to salvage anything from the pile, just sweep to confirm there’s nobody hiding in the rubble or what’s left of the upstairs, shut the door, and move on. Whatever hasn’t been eaten in the food storage is so withered it turns to dust at the touch. The armory is an empty husk, as is the electronics room. Nobody has been here in twenty years. There’s nothing. Nothing. Ash. Dust.

With fifty minutes gone, Valkyrie and Max stand on the pseudo-battlements and stare down into the courtyard. Rei sits at their feet.

“It’s got walls,” Max says.

“It’s less than I wanted,” Valkyrie says back. “We may have been better off staying in Citadel.” If she squints at the horizon, she can see Furiosa’s truck as a sand-blasted smear on top of a dune. “At least nobody will find whatever corpses get left out here. And there’s water.” She pulls the flare gun off her hip, points it at the sky, and fires a shower of green.

Up on the dune, two engines roar to life and a cloud of dust kicks up in answer as wheels clutch at the sand and haul themselves forward. The sky is a beautiful, cloudless blue, rushing out.


	17. The Battle

Dag comes into the diner with a tangle of braids flowing around her face and a sunken-eyed look. “It’s been a long week” she says, then drags herself onto the stool next to Toast and asks for tea, and that’s it.

Capable has just slid the tea across the counter when the satellite phone on Toast’s hip rings. The diner is empty, so she puts it on speaker.

Furiosa’s voice crackles forth to fill the room. “We found it. We’re okay.”

“Awesome,” Toasts says, then hesitates. “Barn’s still standing.”

Furiosa sighs.

Dag leans over. “The girls are bloody amazing. Tell Angharad her diner’s fine.”

Polly, down at the end of the counter with a mouth full of meat and bread, announces “It’s boring as shit here” loud enough to make Toast choke on her sandwich.

Furiosa clears her throat. “Pee-Wee?”

Capable reaches across the counter to fold her hand around Toast’s. She spins the phone towards her. “He likes the garden. Gen’s getting used to him. Don’t worry about him.”

There’s another sigh, then another clearing of the throat. “Thank you. All of you.”

“Yeah. Sure. No problem.” Toast rubs at her eyes. “How long?”

“I don’t know. Soon.”

“Soon?”

“A few days.”

Dag lifts a hand to her face and goes to bite at her thumbnail, then stops herself. Capable squeezes Toast’s hand. Polly picks up a newspaper and unfolds it with a snap. Nux looks between all of them, then ducks out, into the kitchen.

“I’ll call you,” Furiosa says. “Take care of yourselves.”

Toast nods. “Okay.” She hates how small her voice sounds.

Furiosa says it again: “We’ll be back soon.” A liar’s pause. “Don’t worry.”

“Sure.”

The line clicks dead.

***

Furiosa puts the phone down. She’s up on top of the armory, watching Nada put her life insurance to the test as she clambers around on the skeletal framework of the tower and rearranges large sheets of curved metal so they sit _just_ so. She’s tethered to three different points at any given moment by big, sturdy carabiners and rope that is rated for a couple thousand kilos, but Amí still gave up after half an hour and moved their growing pile of explosives outside the compound “so I don’t lose another eye waiting for you to fall when that rusted-out piece of shit crumbles.”

The tower is actually sturdier than it looks, but the winds are strong at that height, and Nada isn’t that big. Furiosa squints up at it one last time, then goes downstairs.

Max is sitting in the shade of the western wall with the dogs sprawled all around. An entire tarp full of weapons is spread out in front of him, plus a separate blanket for the cleaned and oiled ones to his right. They all spent last night sleeping in the cars in the middle of the courtyard, with rotating shifts standing guard on top of the wall. She sat up from two to four – he had four to six, but he came up half an hour early, and let everyone sleep in afterwards. They didn’t say much, sitting up there together.

Furiosa crouches next to him now, reaching down to rub Paddy’s belly as an excuse. “Knee?”

“Fine. Shoulder?”

“Working.”

Max nods without looking at her. “Home?”

“Safe.”

“You?”

She blinks. “Me?”

His eyes flick up to hers, then away again. “Yeah.”

“I’m fine.”

He harrumphs. “Liar.”

She knocks his shoulder with her metal hand, then sits all the way down and picks up her rifle. “Didn’t think I’d ever come back here. It’s…” She stops. “I didn’t expect it.”

Max hums and lets his knee fall open so it rests against hers.

“You probably wish you never brought Pi to us.”

“Nah,” Max says. He hefts her double-barreled shotgun and sights down it, then sets it on the ‘clean’ blanket. “Wish people were better.”

Furiosa smiles. “Dream on.”

Max shrugs, then looks at her. “At least they had you two.”

Furiosa raises her eyebrows and gestures out. “Look where we are.”

Max stabs a finger at the pile of guns; then at Nada on the tower; then Valkyrie, rearranging sandbag walls to her liking; then at the gate, with Amí and all their firepower on the other side. “Most people don’t get a fraction of this.” Angharad and Cheedo are standing in front of the gate, Angharad’s arm loose around Cheedo’s shoulders, stroking her hair. “They’re lucky.”

“I’m sure they don’t feel like it.”

***

Nada’s work on the tower is done by dinner, but just barely. She throws herself down in front of the tiny cookstove that they set up in the middle of the courtyard and immediately begins inhaling everything in reach. Furiosa is sitting watch on the wall.

“What were you doing up there?” Angharad asks. She squints up at the tower. “Building something?”

Nada chews her mouthful twice and swallows it. “Got a little reverse princess-in-the-tower thing going up there.”

“…What?”

Amí snorts. “Speaking from experience, men don’t like to look up.” They point at the cluster of satellite dishes. “We have any luck at all, even if thing go south, the figjams won’t think there’s anything important up there for at least a couple hours. Distress beacons get picked up by satellites, bounced to the authorities, who go “what the shit’s someone doing in the middle of the fucking desert in high summer”, and then soon there’s a nice convenient helicopter out looking for you with some very friendly people who will want to know what all the gang members with big guns are doing in a compound with a bunch of corpses and two women who are obviously hiding from them.”

Everyone except Nada stops eating. Cheedo sets her plate down and covers her mouth with her hands.

“The beacon’s a last resort,” Valkyrie says. “We’ll put you up there anyway, just so you’re not in danger during the fight, but that’s… we’re planning for a worst-case-scenario.”

“Of course,” Angharad says distantly. She shakes her head. “I’m sorry we’ve put you in this position. None of you deserve it.”

Valkyrie pats her knee. “Not a question of what we deserve; _nobody_ deserves what you two have dealt with.” She picks up her fork again. “You should eat. You don’t help anyone by going hungry.”

“You say that like it’s easy,” Cheedo mumbles.

“I’ve put my life on the line for a lot of things and people less deserving than two abused women,” Valkyrie says. “I think all of us have.” She uses her fork to gesture around the circle. “It’s not like any of us had to be bullied into helping out.”

Max grunts. Amí snorts.

“I know this is all scary as hell,” Nada says. “But we don’t live in a lawless post-nuclear wasteland, so there _are_ institutions in place that will help you, even if we can’t. That’s why you’re going up there with a beacon when shit hits the fan: if we fail, there’s still a whole government that’s going to come look for you. You’ll be okay.”

“Do you pinky-swear?” Cheedo mutters sarcastically.

Valkyrie shrugs. “Hell yeah.” She drops her fork and holds out her hand. “Come on.”

Cheedo rolls her eyes, but she does lock her pinky around Valkyrie’s and closes her fist tight before she lets go.

***

That night, they sleep in the armory. Furiosa lays her sleeping bag down next to Max’s. Sometime after everyone has settled down, he wriggles closer to her, until she can fold her arm around his shoulders and he can tuck his head into the crook of her neck.

It only lasts until it’s her turn to sit watch, but it’s nice.

***

Valkyrie has the four-to-six watch, so she brings their little portable coffee-maker and a tin mug up with her. The sky starts changing colors a few minutes before five.

At 5:03, she drops her mug.

***

Toast is pretty sure her phone is ringing too fucking early, until she realizes that it’s the satellite phone going off and bolts out of Valkyrie’s bed.

“Are you okay?”

Furiosa sounds wide awake. “For now.” There is a tremendous amount of banging going on in the background. “Listen, Toast-”

“Please be safe.”

“Toast,” Furiosa says. “We’re proud of you. You’re… having you as part of our lives has been great.” She swallows. “Dag should have it in her schedule, but everyone’s due for vaccinations at the end of February. And keep working with Capable on not twisting her wrist – she’ll be able to ride anyone if she can fix that.”

“Stop it! Stop it! You’re not going to die!”

The door to the room swings open; Dixie and Kero are standing in it with solemn expressions.

“Don’t forget about the garden.”

“Please don’t die,” Toast says. Kero grabs her before she sinks to the floor and guides her to the bed instead.

“We’re proud of all of you,” Furiosa says. “I have to go.” There’s a thunderous boom before she hangs up.

Toast folds her arms over her face and screams into them while Kero strokes her hair and tells Dixie to call Capable and Dag.

***

Amí sank mines in a wide fan leading out from the gate, trying to cover as many angles of approach as possible, and Valkyrie and Furiosa lay down streams of fire to direct the oncoming vehicles into that fan. The War Boys have a bike running point, so he goes up in a shower of sand, and the truck behind him fishtails back and forth for almost a dozen meters before it sets off a second mine that sends it flying into a third. It does a somersault and then lands right-side-up directly in front of the gate, axles shattered, but there’s still at least one person alive because he immediately starts firing into the compound.

The dogs are all penned up inside the armory, but their barking can be heard up on the walls. Max allows himself one glance at the cluster of satellite dishes. Then Nada tosses a grenade down through one of the holes in the walkway.

It bounces once off the truck’s hood, then explodes, and then the truck’s fuel tank explodes, and the concussion from that blast is enough to set off the entire fan of buried bombs, so for a solid thirty seconds it’s hard to be conscious of anything except the roar of shattering earth and metal and skyrocketing sand. The dust cloud rushes over the compound, and Max folds his elbow over his mouth to cough out the particles thrust into his lungs.

Rictus bellows Angharad’s name. The Ace’s voice can be heard under his, yelling for Cheedo.

The tower is still standing. There are engines screaming.

Max thunders down the stairs into the courtyard, ignoring his knee, and reaches the gate just in time to watch Rictus vault the smoking wreck of that first truck. The explosion blew a hole in the gate that he’s about to step through, so Max unloads both barrels of Furiosa’s shotgun into his chest. Rictus, in the manner of someone wearing a bulletproof vest, barely flinches in the process of stalking forward.

“You _stole_ my _property_ ,” he says.

Max lifts the shotgun.

Rictus grabs Max’s entire face in one hand and throws him backwards.  Max hears his own skull strike cinderblocks. Max’s vision fades out. Max can hear Furiosa yelling.

***

There were five trucks, including the one that is now a smoking scrap heap, and another one that lost both wheels on its left side when the entire minefield went off, and the one that is currently on fire but still made it within a few meters of the walls to discharge its load of armed men. When that one explodes, Valkyrie feels the heat on her face, and the blocks under her feet begin to shift.

“What a lovely day,” she hears. _What a lovely day._

She turns her back on the pink and gold sunrise and jumps down the stairs into the dust cloud that is billowing in through the gate. She shoots one War Boy in the leg and then in the face and feels a passing bullet ruffle the feathers on her jacket.

“I can’t see _shit,_ ” Amí snarls somewhere nearby. “ _Fuck_.”

Furiosa appears out of the dust at Valkyrie’s side. “Make like you’re not afraid to die,” she mutters, then knocks their shoulders together and plunges past her. Valkyrie yanks her scarf up to cover her mouth and nose before she follows.

Using her rifle is pointless once she gets on the ground; she yanks a crowbar out of her belt and breaks the wrist of the next War Boy she sees. He screams and drops his gun, then bull-rushes her and slams her into the wall with his shoulder, so she jerks her knee up into his stomach, then drops her crowbar, grabs him by the chin, and snaps his neck. She’s crouching to retrieve the crowbar when Slit comes barreling into her field of view, gets a handful of her hair, and jams his pistol up under her jaw.

“ _Where. Are. They._ ”

“Sent ‘em out before you got here.” Valkyrie lets her knees fold.

Slit screams in rage, and his gun goes off to graze her temple, but then she slams her crowbar into his knees and he drops to the ground with her. He tries to grab her hair again; she bites his hand; he punches her in the face; she closes her teeth together before she lets go; he stomps on her solar plexus; she catches him across the face with the hooked end of the crowbar, ripping into his stitches; another grenade goes off.

***

Max hauls himself to his feet just in time to have the blast turn his knees to jelly again. He leans against the wall and fumbles a pistol off a corpse, then looks around. The dust is settling. The tower is still standing. Valkyrie and Slit are kicking the living shit out of each other, as are Furiosa and The Ace, and Amí is practically dancing circles around Rictus, alternating dropping grenades and firing a 10mm with an extended clip whenever he tries to lunge towards any of the women. Nada is up on the pile of rubble that used to be the front wall of the compound, making trouble for the War Boys still outside.

Max closes his eyes. When he opens them again, there’s a War Boy with a gas mask standing in front of him, hefting Furiosa’s shotgun.

“That’s hers,” Max hears himself say.

The War Boy pauses, then turns his face to look past Max. He freezes momentarily, and by the time he has the shotgun up and braced Rei already has his jaws locked around his wrist. Jackson slams into the War Boy’s legs half a second later. Max tears the shotgun out of his hands and beats the butt of it against the War Boy’s skull until he stops moving.

Rei snarls, and he and Max stare at each other for a moment. Max points back at the door of the armory, now hanging off its hinges; a dark, Nahi-shaped blur is hunkered down just inside “Go.”

“ _Rei_.” Furiosa has The Ace in a chokehold, her metal arm cutting off the flow of life in his neck. “Get out of here! Jackson! Go!” She’s bleeding from a cut on her cheek.

The sound of another vehicle exploding rings off the walls, and Max shoots an anxious glance towards the trucks, then lets his gaze flick up to the tower on his way back to the battlefield. A War Boy runs at him swinging a club made of rebar and concrete, so Max shoots him until he dies, and the one behind him who is running towards Furiosa with a wicked-looking knife. Their bodies thud into the dirt and skid, kicking up small dust clouds of their own.

“ _Everyone stop_.”

Furiosa turns her face towards Valkyrie, The Ace still spitting and trying to clutch at her arms, scrabbling for grip on the metal. Amí and Rictus both freeze in place, as do half a dozen War Boys. Up on the rubble pile, Nada cautiously lowers her hands, both holding grenades.

Valkyrie has a broken nose and blood all over her face, but she’s got one arm wrapped around Slit to hold him against her chest, and her other hand is clenched around the hilt of a Ka-bar, pressed against Slit’s jugular. The stitches holding one side of his mouth closed are shredded, and he’s hyperventilating and twitching in Valkyrie’s grasp, for all that it makes him bleed more.

Valkyrie waits until she can lock eyes with Rictus. “You’ve had all the chances in the world to turn around and leave without any more death. This is your last one.”

Rictus jerks his chin at Slit. “Just another half-life.”

“Really?” The Ka-bar presses a little tighter against Slit’s neck.

“Leave, Rictus,” Furiosa calls over the sound of dying men. “You’ve got one truck left. Leave, or I’ll chain your neck to my bumper and drive us both into hell.”

In Furiosa’s arms, The Ace chokes. Max glances at him, then opens his mouth to yell. The War Boy on the ground behind Furiosa – the one with the knife; the one who was running at her; the one Max _shot_ – lunges out of the sand and slams the needle-sharp blade in between her ribs. She doubles over, and someone else screams.

Valkyrie opens Slit’s neck in a fountain of gore. He stands on his own for an entire second, then collapses.

Max fires into the War Boy’s back until he falls down again, thunders over to plant a boot on his back and unloads rounds into his skull until the clip is empty, and looks up to see Furiosa drop The Ace’s lifeless body and reel on her feet. “Hey,” he says. “Hey.”

Furiosa pulls the knife out of her side and stares as it tumbles from her fingertips into the dirt.

Max turns his head towards the blur in his peripheral vision in time to pistol-whip an on-rushing War Boy, then jams a fresh clip into the pistol and shoots. When he looks up again, Amí’s feet are half a meter off the ground, kicking against the wall, and Rictus has a shotgun leveled at their chest. Max grabs a rock off the ground and heaves it at Rictus’ skull. He misses, but Rictus drops Amí. They crumple.

Furiosa is walking towards Valkyrie, steady and slow, rifle couched in her arms while Valkyrie slams War Boy after War Boy against every hard surface she can find or blows bullets into their skull cavities with a handgun, more blood than skin visible on her face. Looking at her for too long gets Max tackled by Rictus, which is kind of like being tackled by a brick wall, and he lands completely flat on his back with all the wind knocked out of his chest and the ability to feel only the mildest form of surprise.

The tower is still standing. The satellite dishes haven’t moved.

Rictus’ shotgun is pointed at Max’s face now.

A grenade explodes in the middle of the courtyard, then another, then another.

Rei slams into Rictus’ thigh, biting and snarling and howling; Rictus picks him up by the neck and flings him away, then fires at Jackson when he comes barreling up. The Rottweiler howls in pain and retreats, back streaked with blood.

The tower is still standing. There is someone climbing down it, though.

“No,” Max mumbles.

Rictus’ head snaps back to glare at him, and the shotgun barrel follows. “What did you say?” He plants one boot on Max’s throat. “Say it again.”

Cheedo’s voice is thin and wavering over the ringing in Max’s ears. “Stop. Please stop.” She’s crying.

There is much less to stop this time. Nada is crouched next to Amí with four War Boys encroaching on them, Valkyrie is surrounded by a literal pile of bodies, and Furiosa is kneeling in the middle of the courtyard, leaning on her rifle, a fresh pair of twitching corpses on the ground a few meters in front of her. Blood is dripping down her side.

“Please stop,” Cheedo repeats. “I’m sorry. We’ll come home. Just don’t hurt them.” Angharad is stiff beside her, drawn up tall, face wan, hands at her sides.

Rictus takes his boot off Max’s neck, but doesn’t move the shotgun. “You let your father die.” His voice is soft, caring, saddened. “You’ve been so ungrateful.”

The Ace hasn’t moved. Max hopes he’s actually dead.

“You are so precious to your parents – _were_ so precious. Just as my wife was precious to me.” Rictus takes one step towards them, away from Max, but keeps the shotgun pointed back. “I don’t know if your mother will want you anymore, now that you’ve killed your father.”

“You killed him,” Angharad says, and she’s not looking at Cheedo or Furiosa. She keeps her chin held high as Rictus thinks about pointing the shotgun at her, but then he remembers himself and keeps it fixed on Max. He shakes his head and sighs.

“Ungrateful,” he says. “After everything we gave you.”

A shudder runs through Angharad’s body, and she drop to her knees, clutching her stomach. She drags in a deep, ragged breath and still manages to look proud. “You mean everything you took?”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Rictus snarls. “You deserve _nothing_.”

Cheedo flinches. “Don’t talk to her like that!”

The invisible cord holding Rictus to Max snaps, and he stalks towards the tower, snapping the shotgun around to point it at Cheedo. “Who are you to give me orders?” The barrel flicks towards Angharad. “Who are you to insult me? We _made_ you.”

One of the War Boys is walking towards Furiosa. She looks at him, then turns her body towards Rictus and couches her rifle against her shoulder. The War Boy calls Rictus’ name and breaks into a run.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Cheedo says.

Rictus, about to turn around, spins back and raises a hand to strike her, and Furiosa blows the top of his skull off. He staggers, then topples forward, and Cheedo ducks out of his path as he crashes to the ground. Angharad makes a horrible sound.

Max lunges to his feet and gets his pistol pointed at the War Boy who is now standing over Furiosa with an axe in his hand.

“Is it worth it?” Valkyrie calls. She’s also got her rifle leveled at him, squinting through the blood that is dripping down her face. “We’ll let you go. But go now, before I lose my patience.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” the War Boy says. “All of you. You’re fucking freaks.”

Rei growls at him.

“Let’s get out of here,” says one of the ones by Amí and Nada. “This is fucking insane. I didn’t sign up to fight fucking Special Ops agents and get bombed. I’m fucking leaving.” He drops his gun and pulls a combat knife off his belt, then holds his hands in the air as he walks towards the gate. “This is bullshit, guys. Come on.”

Slowly – too slow, with Furiosa bleeding out and Angharad making choked, pain-driven sobs to break the silence – the rest of the War Boys throw down their weapons and follow suit. The one standing over Furiosa is the last one. “You’ll pay for this someday,” he says, and spits on the ground in front of the gate. But he goes, too.

Furiosa and Angharad collapse in the same moment and Max doesn’t know which one to run towards.

Valkyrie gets to Furiosa first, gathering her up in her arms. “She needs a hospital. They both do. Get the dogs.”

The sun is rising on a beautiful, brilliantly blue day.

***

They have to waste time crating the dogs because Angharad is in too much pain to stand up, Furiosa is bleeding out, Amí has a severe concussion and Max a mild one, Valkyrie has at least three broken ribs, and Cheedo is having a panic attack, so there is no room for any other kind of mayhem to fit into those two cars, and they’re leaving the trailer behind so they can drive faster. Nada and Amí take Angharad alone so she can lie down in the backseat; Valkyrie strips off her shirt without the slightest concern for modesty and demands Max help wrap her ribs so she can drive without passing out, then hightails it across the desert at the maximum speed that doesn’t threaten the dogs or make Furiosa groan.

Max’s job is to hold her hand and talk to her so she stays conscious, and not panic.

For all the days of criss-crossing the desert that were required to find the compound, it is only thirteen hours to Alice Springs.

Only thirteen hours.

“You said it took days when you had the coordinates,” Cheedo says. “How can it only be thirteen hours?”

“It’s thirteen hours because we don’t have a trailer anymore, we’re not in a tanker truck, and I don’t have to care about saving gas or sleeping because my best friend is dying.” Valkyrie’s got a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, but she does spare a glance over her shoulder as they roar between two dunes. “How is she?”

Furiosa’s eyes are glazed over until she blinks. “I’m fine.”

“Liar,” Valkyrie mutters. She flicks a finger at the satellite phone mounted on the dashboard. “Call Toast. See if Dag is anywhere near her.”

***

“Are you okay?”

It’s Cheedo’s voice that answers and makes Toast’s heart stop. “Furiosa’s hurt. Is Dag there?”

Dag is sitting right next to Toast, and grabs the phone like a lifeline. “What happened?”

“She got stabbed.”

“Oh my god.” Capable folds her arms around herself and leans against Toast. Nux rubs her back nervously.

Dag cradles the phone and looks back at them. “I’m going to take this in the other room.”

Toast nods weakly. “Is everyone alive?”

Cheedo hesitates. “Everyone on our side.” A horrible wheezing sound comes through under her voice, and Toast knows who it must be coming from.

“Okay.” Toast rubs her hands through her hair, then waves them at Dag. “Go. Go before I puke.”

***

“Why is she making that noise?”

“Punctured lung; she’s pumping air into her chest cavity,” Valkyrie says. “She’ll collapse her lungs if we don’t do anything.” Her eyes meet Max’s in the rearview. “Help us out here, Dag.”

“Just get her to a hospital!”

“We’re at least twelve hours from anything that can deal with a papercut, nevermind a stab wound and punctured lung. _Help_ , Dag.”

Dag sucks in a long breath and lets it out in a longer sigh. “Stab her again.”

Cheedo flinches. “ _What_?”

“It doesn’t have to be big. Anything sharp and somewhat sterile will relieve the pressure.”

Valkyrie swallows. “Glove box. First aid kit. Scalpel.” She looks into the rearview again. “You kill her, I’ll find you in hell.”

“I know,” Max says. He takes the scalpel from Cheedo and squeezes Furiosa’s hand. “I am so sorry.” He waits until there’s a relatively flat stretch of ground visible out the windshield, then slides the blade between Furiosa’s ribs and immediately pulls it out again. There’s a pop, and then Furiosa drags in the biggest inhale Max has ever seen before gasping it out again. “I know, I know. Hey.” He presses a fresh wad of gauze against the new wound, then reaches for her face, cups it in his free hand. “Hey there.” He tries to smile.

Furiosa shudders.

“How long has it been since she was stabbed?” Dag asks.

Cheedo says “about an hour” through her hand.

“Oh, fuck.”

The engine revs harder. “Max,” Valkyrie says through gritted teeth. “What’s your blood type.” There is no question mark.

“O-negative. Universal donor.” He holds out his hand for the first aid kit, which Cheedo passes him with shaking hands. Why it has sterile tubing he doesn’t know, and doesn’t care. It’s a deus ex machina, and they need one right now.

“Stay with us,” Valkyrie says, then nudges Cheedo. “Keep her awake.” She blinks and swallows hard.

Cheedo leans into the backseat and takes Furiosa’s bruised human hand in hers. “Furiosa,” she whispers. “Furiosa. Please stay.”

Furiosa’s head lolls to the side, and her eyes close as Max slides the needle into his arm. “No,” he says to the universe. “No, no, no, no, no.” He watches the blood trickle out of his arm, fumbles with the tubing and mumbles “Hold it up, hold it up” to himself until his heart pushes it to the far end, rasps out “I’m sorry” before he slips the needle into her vein. “There you go.” He reaches for her face again. “There you go.”

Furiosa sighs.

“Be very careful,” Dag says. “Don’t kill yourself because you’re so determined to save her.” She sighs. “Call me in a couple hours, or if anything changes.”

“Can do.” Valkyrie ends the call. She looks over her shoulder again. “Hey. Pit- Max. Thanks.”

Max shakes his head and squeezes Furiosa’s hand. He nods at Cheedo. “Thank her.”

"True." Valkyrie turns her head and tries for a smile. "You saved us all, back there."

Cheedo shakes her head. "I almost got Angharad killed. Furiosa saved us."

"Furiosa wouldn't have had a chance without you." Valkyrie looks forward again. "But I pinky-swore, right? That you'd be okay?" She nods into the rearview. "We're gonna be okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Accidentally spent nine hours writing today instead of doing homework - oops?  
> (I'm not done with these fools yet, I promise.)


	18. The War

Furiosa has a crystal-clear recollection of killing The Ace, of being stabbed, of watching Cheedo put herself in front of Rictus, and pulling the trigger. She remembers the dogs circling her through a kind of haze – Jackson was bleeding. Not badly, all of it on his back, like he was grazed by a shotgun blast, but she remembers laying a hand on his side and hoping they’d killed the man who shot him. And then…

Amí was hurt. Amí could barely stand. Valkyrie had her shirt off – there was blood all over her neck and chest and arms. Max was binding her ribs while Nahi danced at the edge of her vision. Valkyrie had broken ribs, then. And Angharad. Something happened to Angharad.

Furiosa opens her eyes onto a dark room lit only by a collection of machines and light from the hallway. Hospital. There’s someone sleeping in a chair at the edge of her vision. “Val?”

There’s a rustle before her mother leans forward and sets her hand on the side of Furiosa’s face. She smiles. “You’ve been out for a long time. Valkyrie’s fine. She’s sleeping.”

Furiosa swallows. Her throat is coated with sandpaper. “How long?”

“Almost three days. Happy 2016.” Her mother scoots closer to fuss with the sheets, then takes Furiosa’s hand. Her prosthetic is gone. Her mother sees her looking and adds, “They took your arm off before they brought you in. Val has it.”

Furiosa nods. “Angharad?”

Her mother hesitates. “She’s alive. She had a hard couple of days.” She squeezes Furiosa’s hand. “You should rest. We can talk more in the morning.”

Furiosa has been hospitalized enough times to recognize the painkillers they’ve pumped into her. She closes her eyes and is asleep before her mother lets go of her hand.

***

The lights are on when she wakes up again. Max has his arms folded on the edge of her bed, face buried in them, fast asleep. Nada is typing on her phone, but she look up when Furiosa clear her throat, and immediately elbows Max in the ribs. “Your mum just left,” she says. “You were out another twelve hours.”

Max picks his head up, takes the hand Furiosa holds out to him, and presses his mouth against her knuckles.

“I’ll get the others,” Nada offers, before practically flying out of the room.

For a minute, all Max does is watch Furiosa watch him. Then he sits up a little straighter. “I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I thought he was dead.”

Furiosa raises one eyebrow. “I seem to have survived.”

He makes a face.

She jerks her chin at the bed. “Get up here.”

Max’s forehead wrinkles up, but once she shuffles herself to the side a little, he squeezes himself onto the mattress. He’s trying not to crowd her, but she fits her arm around his shoulders and gets him to settle down against her so she can card her fingers through his hair and feel him breathe. He cups her jaw and kisses her forehead. “How much do you remember?”

She squints into the fog. “You stabbed me.”

Max winces.

Furiosa curls her fingers in his hair and leans her forehead against his collarbone. “There was something about blood – did you give me your blood? In the car?”

Max makes a grunt that is somehow both uncomfortable and affirmative at the same time.

Furiosa closes her eyes. “What happened to Angharad?”

“She, um. She lost the baby,” Max says. He sighs. “Her brain… decided it was a liability. Got her in too late to save it.”

“Is she okay?”

“She will be. With time.”

Furiosa nods. “Amí?”

“Rictus cracked their skull.”

“Shit.”

“Shit yourself,” Amí snaps. Nada wheels them in through the door with Cheedo and Valkyrie at their heels, and a third person who hangs the back – tall and broad with jet-black hair and a coat striped with crow feathers: Valkyrie’s mother.

“Sigrun?”

Sigrun Gale smiles as she leans against the wall. “Been a while.”

Furiosa nods. “You look good.”

“You look like a war hero.”

Furiosa rolls her eyes.

Nada stops the wheelchair next to the bed and steps back to look both directions down the hallway before closing the door. “We’re not supposed to have more than two guests in here, so keep your voices down.”

“Fuck that,” Valkyrie declares, sweeping down to hug Furiosa and scrub her knuckles on Max’s scalp. “You feel okay?”

“I’m fine.” Furiosa blinks. Valkyrie’s got on jeans and a tank top – the cuts on her face and hands are already scabbing and scarring over. “Where’s your jacket?”

“Getting deep-cleaned by the government.” She looks a little sheepish. “Turns out you can’t walk into a hospital with a bunch of half-dead people and a girl you called CPS about without anyone asking questions. Nada had to make a few calls.”

 “Y’all are _so_ lucky I’m still considered active-duty,” Nada snipes. “Officially, we just wrapped up an undercover op to dismantle the power structure of the War Boys that had all you retired people involved so they wouldn’t suspect anything. And we happened to rescue two abuse victims in the process, but we’re not allowed to talk about it. Top secret, you see.” She winks at Sigrun, who mimes locking her lips and tossing a key.

Cheedo steps around Valkyrie and comes up to give Furiosa a careful hug. “Hi,” she mumbles.

“Hey. Doing okay?”

“I think so.” She pulls back. “Angharad says hi, too. She’s… not allowed out of bed yet.”

Furiosa nods. “Can I go to her?”

“You haven’t talked to a doctor since you’ve been conscious,” Sigrun says. “Let’s get you checked out – then you can go.” She stabs a finger at Valkyrie’s climbing eyebrows. “Do not let her leave before I find one.”

Amí waits until the door is closed behind her before jerking their thumb at the ceiling. “I’ve got a shared room, and the roommate has a weepy family. I need to shut my eyes for ten minutes.”

“She’s on a different floor,” Valkyrie says. “We gotta be quick.”

Max slides off the bed first; Furiosa’s head gets light when she stands, and the stretch on her stitches doesn’t exactly help. Max gets under one arm and Nada the other, and they ease her down into the vacated wheelchair.

Amí takes a slow few steps to sink onto the bed, careful about how they set their head. “Go,” they say. “Just turn off the light.”

Furiosa frowns at Valkyrie.

“I’ll stay,” Nada says.

“Don’t need a babysitter; it’s just a bruised brain.”

“Like hell you don’t need a babysitter; shut up and go to sleep.” Nada waves them awau as she drops into a chair. Max hits the light on their way out.

***

Angharad is half the size Furiosa remembers, and twice as pale. She’s staring at the ceiling when they come in. Then her eyes roll towards the door and she drops her chin as she tries to prop up a smile. “Furiosa.”

Max stays by the door to keep watch. Cheedo sits at the end of Angharad’s bed, and Valkyrie cocks her hip against the wall.

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing Furiosa says. She has something else lined up, but it stops in her throat.

Angharad shakes her head. “No.”

“We put you in… hell, just about.”

“I didn’t want the baby,” Angharad says. She blinks. “I would have kept him, of course. Tried not to make him feel responsible.”

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Valkyrie murmurs.

Angharad shakes her head again. “It’s fine. I kept telling myself it wasn’t fair to… to the fetus. “No unnecessary deaths,” you know.”

Furiosa tries to breathe. Cheedo is silent, staring at her hands.

Angharad lifts her hands, then drops them again. “I was going to see his face. Every time I looked at him. It wouldn’t have been fair, but I still _would_. I’ve been seeing it every time I’ve looked down for the last six months.” She nods. “It’s good he didn’t have to grow up with a mother who was… going to resent him.”

“I know you better than that,” Valkyrie says. “You wouldn’t.”

Angharad smiles. “You say that…” She turns her face towards Furiosa and studies her. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“I wanted to see you,” Furiosa says.

“I’m here,” Angharad says. “I’m not going anywhere.” She sighs. “You’ve done enough worrying about me for one lifetime. Go take care of yourself. I’ll be here.”

“Okay.”

Cheedo slides off the bed; Valkyrie straightens up off the wall and grips the handles of Furiosa’s chair. Max falls into step beside them as they exit the room.

“She needs time,” Valkyrie says. “We can come back tomorrow.”

“We all need time, I think.” Furiosa folds her palm over her ribs. “And I think we all need to go home.”

 “Seconded,” Cheedo mumbles.

Max grunts.

“Fourthed.” Valkyrie sighs as they step into the elevator. She leans past Cheedo to hit the button for the third floor, and winces. “I’m sick of hospitals.”

***

“Toast! Toast! _Toast!_ ”

Toast sticks her head out of the hayloft window to see Furiosa’s truck, malachite-green paint obscured by what looks like a centimeter-thick layer of red and brown dust, rolling past the gate. Capable’s already vaulted the fence of Tripp and Bones’ paddock. Toast drops the hay bale she’s carrying, shimmies down the ladder, and gets out of the barn and down the driveway in time to throw her arms around Valkyrie before she’s closed her door.

“Mind the ribs,” Valkyrie grunts, but she kisses Toast’s temple and hugs her back. “Hey, sweetheart.”

Toast presses her face into the crow feathers covering Valkyrie’s shoulder. “No more plots; no more heroism; no more almost dying.”

“What, you’re gonna stop me?”

“I can try.”

“Move over,” Capable complains, and squeezes in to kiss Valkyrie’s cheek.

Toast gives Capable her turn to harass Valkyrie and looks down when she feels tiny feet stepping on top of hers. She coos and drops to one knee so she can scoop Pi up in her arms; Jackson seizes the opportunity and rushes up to lick her face. “Yeah, I missed you too, mate.” When she goes to scrub at his back, her hand lands on something crusty. “Jackson?” She lifts her head and squints down his back at the scabbed streaks. “What happened to him?”

Max clears his throat. “He saved my life.” He gestures at Rei, who has no visible damage, thank everything and everyone. “Him, too.”

“Bollocks.” Toast glances around to find Angharad. She looks like shit, but she’s standing on her own two feet with Nahi leaning against her thigh, and she’s still able to hug. Behind her is Furiosa – who also looks like shit – with Cheedo at her side, so Toast gets them both wrapped up at once. “I oughta kick both your asses.”

“I didn’t get hurt,” Cheedo says. She hesitates. “Missed you, though.”

“Missed you too, kid.”

Another car pulls up the driveway – and then another. Toast sees Nada’s Jeep over Furiosa’s shoulder, in front of Max’s car. Of course, Max is standing two meters away: out of the car climb two women Toast hasn’t seen in a long, long time.

She can hear Polly crunching down the driveway behind her. “How many white boys does it take to kill you fucking freight trains?”

“Haven’t found out yet,” Valkyrie yells back. “And watch your mouth in front of my mother.”

Sigrun swaggers up the hill. “To quote my daughter: “fuck that”.” She sticks out her hand and clasps Polly’s forearm.

Cheedo snorts, and Toast lets both of them go. “Kero and Dixie send their best – they had to get back to work.”

“I owe them a few dozen favors by now,” Furiosa says. She turns her face up towards Polly. “Thanks for staying.”

Polly grunts. “Well, I’m leaving now. No space for me with all you people back, you know.”

“If I hug you, will you punch me?” Valkyrie asks.

“Yes.”

Toast rolls her eyes and turns to face Polly. She scoops up Pi again, stops a meter away, and smiles. “Can _I_ hug you?”

Polly rumbles like a thunderstorm, then stumps two steps forward and slings a heavy arm across Toast’s shoulders to pat her on the back. “You ain’t so bad.” Then she limps past. She grips Furiosa’s human forearm with one hand and Valkyrie’s with the other, shakes once, does the same with Amí and Nada, then nods to Cheedo, nods to Angharad, nods to the mothers watching in the background. Then she climbs into her car and drives away.

“Russians,” Nada mutters.

“I liked her,” Angharad says, and folds her hands over her stomach.

***

Dag comes by later in the day; they wind up sitting around the kitchen, thirteen drained people who are, above all else, tired.

They crack open a couple bottles of wine. Amí’s not allowed any, and Mary and Dag abstain, but Cheedo asks for a glass. She takes one sip and pulls a face. “That doesn’t taste like I hoped it would.”

“Rarely does,” Nada says. She gets to drain Cheedo’s cup.

It’s Angharad’s fist drink in a long time, and she’s not far behind Cheedo; she eventually hands her drink to Capable and starts braiding her hair while she and Nux finish it.

Cheedo goes home with Dag a few hours later. It’s a good idea. She needs space from what’s happened. From the desert. From Pearl. (When they first got back, she spent ten minutes sitting on the ground with her arms wrapped around Pee-Wee, and Angharad doesn’t blame her.)

“Do you want to go home tonight?” Capable asks her after Dag and Cheedo have left. “Do you want us to come with you?”

“I think so. Yeah. And that would be nice.”

She drives slow through the dark streets – because it’s been a long time since she was behind a wheel, and because it looks so completely different without the threat of Rictus lurking behind all the corners. Her house is the same. Her guest bed hasn’t been remade since Cheedo used it to hide.

Angharad walks through all the rooms brushing her fingertips over the walls. It smells stuffy and stale, so she opens every window in the place, and then sits on her bed and breathes the smell of scrub brush and the sound of summer wind.

“Happy New Year,” she says when she hands Capable a set of clean sheets. She’s a few days late.

“Happy New Year, Angharad. Sleep well.”

***

Furiosa and Valkyrie take a long time to feed dinner, and not just because they’re both moving at half-speed. Their mothers have come out to help, but every horse wants to ask where they’ve been and what’s happened, and they’re hard to argue with. Tripp hangs his head over Valkyrie’s shoulder and lips at her hair, completely ignoring the hay-filled wheelbarrow beside her; she wraps her arms around his neck and stands there until Furiosa gets away from Bones’ frantic sniffing and nose-shoving long enough to dish out their hay. They have to let Pee-Wee out of his paddock because he’s so determined to glue himself to their knees. Buster almost knocks Furiosa over when he shoves his head into her hip to say hello. Harley is gentler with Valkyrie, but still gets black and white hair all over her; Minky makes a delighted wuffle-noise as soon as he recognizes Mary, and she winds up staying behind in that paddock so she can sit with him while he eats his dinner. Dag came up earlier to say hello to Roman, so he mostly ignores the rest of them and just stands at the fence, watching the road where her taillights disappeared.

When they get over to the mares, Lily and Fancy insist on sniffing them all over while Sis steals a flake of hay straight out of the wheelbarrow. Then it’s on to Gen’s paddock: she comes right up, pushes her face into Furiosa’s chest, and heaves a 500-kilogram sigh.

Sigrun scratches Gen’s withers as she passes with an armload of grain buckets. “They missed you too, pretty lady. Don’t worry.”

When Pee-Wee whickers from knee-height, Gen drops her head to touch noses with him. He makes a happy grunt; she flicks her ears forward and nibbles a loose piece of hay off his back. They drop his dinner next to Gen’s and leave him in with her.

Valkyrie wraps her arm around Furiosa’s shoulders as they walk back to the house. “I think everyone’s gonna be okay” she says, then looks up the hill, and pauses in front of the gate to Pearl’s paddock.

“I can’t go up there,” Furiosa mumbles.

Valkyrie squeezes her shoulder. “I’ll see you inside, then.”

Furiosa hesitates and glances at Sigrun, then nods and steps out from under Valkyrie’s arm. Valkyrie doesn’t look at her mother when she opens the gate and starts the hike up to the stalls. The shavings are clean – of course they’ve been mucked out, replaced; leaving them would have been unhygienic. She closes the door, then sits in the middle of the stall and shuts her eyes.

Pearl was a big horse. She would have torn up the stall with her thrashing. Valkyrie stares at the inside of her eyelids and watches Rictus’ skull detonate, listens to Slit gurgle and die at her feet. Pearl was quiet. “About as quiet as any I’ve ever seen,” Dag had said. She’d heaved that one huge, heavy sigh into the phone, and then she was gone. Dead.

Pearl’s dead.

There are two sets of footsteps crossing the paddock.

Sigrun hovers off to the side while Toast leans over the stall door. “How long is this going to hurt?”

“Forever, probably.”

Toast nods. She pulls the door open and takes two steps over to a point on the wall that connects this stall with Pee-Wee’s. “Her head was here, when I found her. She… looked at me. Like I could do something.” Her knees fold, and her breathing stutters. “It’s a fucking nightmare.”

“It’ll get better,” Valkyrie says.

“How?”

Sigrun steps into the stall. “Because it hurts now.” She crouches in front of Valkyrie and rests her elbows on her knees, fingertips just brushing the shavings. “Skin gets calloused, joints get scar tissue, bones calcify. Everything that can hurt can harden.”

“That’s not remotely depressing,” Toast says.

Valkyrie leans forward to rest her forehead against her mother’s knee. Sigrun strokes her hair and asks, “Why do you think babies cry so much? If you’ve never been uncomfortable, a small pinch feels like hell.”

“You’re _definitely_ Val’s mother,” Toast says, “but I’m gonna need to be more drunk if you’re going to get this profound on me.” She wraps her arms around her knees. “I just… I miss her.”

Valkyrie clears her throat. She picks at a single shaving until it splits down the middle. ”I miss her, too.”

Her mother kisses her hair. “Of course you do,” she says. “You cared.”

***

After so many days in cars, it’s easy to convince Amí and Nada to spend one night in a real bed (“One night only, though. Forcing the government to make us a cover story comes at a price.”). They set them up in Max’s spare room, and Sigrun and Mary in the Keeper’s old bed, then make the trek back to the farm to find Toast asleep on the couch. They prod her awake and point her at Valkyrie’s bed, where she sacks out again next to a scar-backed Rottweiler and old Australian Shepard who leave just enough room for Valkyrie to crawl under the blankets.

That done, Furiosa and Max retreat to the kitchen once more; Nahi slinks away upstairs, but Rei stays with them, letting Pi chew on his ears and tail while his head rests on his paws and his eyes blink slow, drifting between the humans and the front door.

“He saved my life,” Max says again.

“He’s an ex-military Kurdish Kangal,” Furiosa says. “Every instinct he owns says he has to put himself between his family and danger. That’s his job.” Then she lets Max chew out the implications of that in silence.

It’s ticking on towards midnight when they drag themselves upstairs. Furiosa still has bandages on her ribs; she can only stretch so far, has to move slow when unbuckling her arm, pulling it loose, stripping off her jeans. Then she can sink onto the bed and lie down.

Nahi, who has been at the edge of the frame, flickering in and out of the shadows, sunk down out of view for so long, jumps up and tucks himself against her legs. Rei grumbles once, then settles at the end of the bed. Pi yips at Max until he picks her up and sets her on the blankets; she tries to claim Furiosa’s pillow while he pulls his brace off, and Furiosa has to let a few fingers get chewed on until Max relocates Pi to Rei’s side. She yelps a protest and scampers back up the bed. Eventually, for want of sleep, they have to let her curl up in the space between their chests. And then they do – sleep, that is. Until there’s a little more that’s been allowed to heal.

***

Furiosa’s brain switches on at dawn, when Pi paws at her chin and complains about needing to go to the bathroom. Max pulls her off Furiosa’s chest, but she’s already snapped awake. “Sorry,” he rumbles, sitting up with a wriggling Pi cradled in one arm. She’s visibly bigger than when they left. Rei and Nahi are awake, but haven’t moved.

“It’s okay.” Furiosa closes her eyes again. “How’s your knee?”

She hears him shrug. “Fine.”

“Want to help feed breakfast?”

“For horses or dogs?”

“Both.”

He’s quiet. When she opens her eyes to check why, Max is watching her, hair sticking up where it’s been mashed against the pillow all night, eyes soft. “Alright,” he says. “Sure.”

Furiosa nods. Sitting up makes her wince, but she does it by herself, and whistles through her teeth so all three dogs lift their heads. “Out of bed,” she says. “Come on. Brekkie.”

Rei and Nahi hit the floor in an avalanche of blurred fur and clicking claws, chasing each other out of the room while Pi protests her abandonment from Max’s arms.

Furiosa leans over to kiss his cheek. “That means you, Fool.”

Max raises his eyebrows and makes a _harrumph_ noise, but follows her out of bed and down the stairs all the same. There are four dogs waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs, and eleven horses outside, and a ragtag pile of humans who are going to want food on the sooner end of later, before they leave. And they’ll need to stop by the diner at some point, to see Angharad. And call Cheedo. And deal with Family Services. And get her legally adopted by Dag. And maybe, somewhere in there, teach Max how to ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it has been quite a ride (pun intended), but here we are. If you want to read fifteen gazillion half-composed summaries of other AUs I'm thinking about writing about these knuckleheads/talk to me about stuff/read lots of yelling about American politics and horses (generally not in the same posts) my tumblr handle is thentherewasfury (the list of potential AUs currently includes a Pacific Rim one, a Lawless one, and a Fallout one, and there may be an ASOIAF one bubbling up in there too).  
> Of course, this specific installment comes in the wake of Olivia Inglis and Coriolanus' horribly tragic deaths, so please: hug your horses while there's still time to do it.  
> Thanks for sticking with this. <3


End file.
